On May 16, 2002, the Creative Commons site was launched and the Intercommons concept and web site was also made public and referenced by the Creative Commons. Intercommons proposer DigitalSpace Corporation entered into a memoranum of understanding with the Creative Commons formalizing our collaboration over the past year. DigitalSpace will continue to work with the Creative Commons providing advice regarding intellectual property issues from the perspective of a software developer. In turn, we hope to engage with Creative Commons and others on the further development of the Intercommons.

The Intercommons has had an interesting history of development over the past several years. Some of the significant events in our past and current news include:

The Digital Space Commons

• November 15, 2002: A privately held, successful, seven year old company, DigitalSpace Corporation, voted to adopt the Intercommons organizational design "Code of the Commons" to reorganize itself into a for-profit non-stock member/licensee company, changing its name to The Digital Space Commons. We will be following the process at this company closely and reporting updates on this site and on our list.

• October 2002: DigitalSpace Corporation members attend Internet2 Member's Meeting in Los Angeles.

Damer presenting concept of Commons with slide of Lessig and Supreme Court

• October 2002: Intercommons mentioned in interview for the Pop!Tech conference by JD Lasica and then presented for the first time in public at the Pop!Tech conference by Bruce Damer. Pictures of the PopTech conference and this presentation can be seen here.
  
  
• October 2002: Canonical design documents for a Commons and data structures to implement a Commons Interface are posted for discussion. Internet2 is engaged in discussions as a possible partner or member in The Digital Space Commons.
  

• September 2002: DigitalSpace Corporation is to be reorganized as a Commons, a beta instance of the Intercommons design (see November item above).
  

• May 16, 2002: Intercommons mentioned in collaboration between DigitalSpace and the Creative Commons, DigitalSpace enters into Memorandum of Understanding with Creative Commons. Creative Commons site launched at the O'Reilly conference on May 16th. A new mission statement "Why the Intercommons" is published.
  
  
• April-May 2002: Intercommons-list dialogue developing the mission statement "Why the Intercommons (draft proposal)?" with discussion group members produces some clearer direction for Intercommons.
  
  
• April 2002: Intercommons recommended as a community project on Larry Hagerty's Matrix Masters
  
  
• March 11, 2002: Full reasoning behind Intercommons concept presented to the Creative Commons group at Stanford University, subsequently discussed and some sort of formal collaboration offered.
  
  
• February 11, 2002: Larry Lessig first talks publicly about the Creative Commons initiative in an interview with SFGate.
  
  
• December 31, 2001- January 1, 2002: Initial Intercommons web sites developed andlaunched for Intercommons.com, Intercommons.org and Intercommons.net.
  
  
• December 19, 2001: "Opening Statements" document presented.
  

• November 28, 2001: Intercommons name proposed, domain names secured
  
  
• November 12, 2001: Damer and Lessig meet again at his book launch event for "The Future of Ideas", proposal for the creation of a new marketplace commons and intellectual property conservancey is again discussed, Lessig encourages further dialogue and discusses Creative Commons initiative.
  
  
  
  
• July 19, 2001: meeting at the Digital Garden in Northern California including Lawrence Lessig, Ben Adida, Bill Graves, Jake Bowman, Bruce Damer, Galen Brandt, Alan Chinowsky and others. An open market with legal, intellectual property and developer commons is proposed. See a gallery of photos of this meeting here.

• May 2001: Damer and Lessig meet again at Stanford, Damer commits company and "MeetingPage" product to path leading to Intercommons

• April 12, 2001: Presentation at the Stanford Cyberlaw Center reintroduces Bruce Damer and Lawrence Lessig.
  
  
• 2000: Bruce Damer and Jake Bowman first meet, and jointly continue development of market architecture concepts based on Jake's research and Dee Hock's VISA International model. This discussion is aided greatly by Jan Hauser, then of Sun Microsystems.

• March 12, 1997: Bruce Damer and Lawrence Lessig first meet at the Seventh Annual Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy. Damer's lunchtime session on "avatar cyberspace" gives Lessig a clearer idea of what his book "Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace" will be about. Lessig later features Damer's work in the book.

• 1996-2002: Concept development of open marketplace for software, services and creative digital content progresses throughout the backdrop of the dot-com era, venture and shareholder value fiascos, and the growth of the open source movement.
  
  
• 1995: Damer founds DigitalSpace Corporation, a for-profit cooperative in the field of virtual worlds and online community, and the Contact Consortium a not-for-profit open communty in the field of graphical, multi-user cyberspace, as precursors to the Intercommons concept.
  
  
• 1992: Bruce Damer conceives of a commons of shared intellectual property and rights to innovate in the "wellspring" concept piece, while living in Prague and establishing two software laboratories there.
  

• 1987: Bruce Damer first codifys concepts of a shared developer commons with ability to spin out ventures. This proposal is rejected by his then employer.