An explosion of creativity with no IP incentive. That’s how I can best describe the happenings of the past three days, and I’ve decided to get in on the act myself. I present to you, my Creative Commies soviet-style poster.

And here’s the source svg file.

It has been an impressive demonstration of how quickly you can rally the troops, as it were, on the internet.

A torrent (heh) of creativity has taken place over the last 2 days and it all started with Free Software’s nemesis, little Billy Gates making a comment during his CES keynote speech. Quoth he;

I’d say that of the world’s economies, there’s more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist.

Well, that didn’t sit right with many people, one of which was Xeni Jardin over at BoingBoing, who whipped up a quick take on Gates’ comments after a suggestion from a reader: A communist flag with the copyleft logo in place of the hammer and sickle.

What followed can only be described as flash mob of creativity. Jaime Morrison followed Xeni’s lead and whipped up a fantastic soviet-style poster to add to what was becoming a call to arms.

From this vortex of creativity, came the Desktop Images and then came the t-shirts: One from Ryan Schroeder, and The Other (my favourite), from Giant Robot Printing. And finally the buttons: One and Two.

Just goes to show how we communists need little incentive to create.