Sunday, February 18, 2007

OpenCola - Open Source Coca Cola

Check it out all you L337 haXX0|2Z! Tired of Jolt Cola fueling all of your late night Ubuntu shenanigans? Well now you've got a new, open source alternative to latch onto.

OpenCola is a soft drink which, unlike other sodas out there, openly distributes its recipe to consumers so that they may alter its formula and make their own open creations at home.

OpenCola is a brand of cola unique in that the instructions for making it are freely available and modifiable. Anybody can make the drink, and anyone can modify and improve on the recipe as long as they, too, license their recipe under the GNU General Public License.

Although originally intended as a promotional tool to explain open source software, the drink has taken on a life of its own. The Toronto-based OpenCola company has become better known for the drink than the software it was supposed to promote. Laird Brown, the company’s senior strategist, attributed its success to a widespread mistrust of big corporations and the “proprietary nature of almost everything.” A website selling the stuff has shifted 150,000 cans.

The company who originally started the drink has since become insolvent, but the recipe for OpenCola is still available online for free. Pretty nifty.

Via digg and everythingelse.

2 comments:

qubitsu said...

Did you read the contributors section?

"The following people have contributed refinements to the formula. Thanks to:
Cory Doctorow (cory@opencola.com)
Tom Swulius (swulius@ih2000.net)"

O_O

Allen said...

0mG d00dz! 8-x!