[apologies if this not the right forum] Hi, This might sound a bit awkward later on. I have gathered metadata from about 117k Thingiverse.com models. Here's some graphs that I've pulled from the data: http://ossoil.com/thingiverse In my experience writing together with another scholar results always to better outcome. This time I thought to try this forum :) Therefore I'm looking for someone who might be interested about the same topics - in this case 3D modelling community & licenses used - and who would like to co-author an article about the results that have already been found and what else (ideas welcome) could be found. About the article: 3D Printing is still a hot topic. More 3D printers are being developed which can be seen for example in the amount of Kickstarter 3D printer projects. Having an opportunity to use 3D printer is not enough though. Digital 3D models are needed too and sharing the models is said to be common among the community members. For long time Thingiverse has been the de facto service to store digital 3D models for others to use. According to Wikipedia Thingiverse.com "is a website dedicated to the sharing of user-created digital design files." It is said to be "the most widely used 3D model repositories in the Maker community". Some say that "Thingverse is built on the concept of giving back. In other words, as a responsible community member, you should not only download models but also upload and share your creations to repay the community". Other digital 3d model sharing services Yet, not all share the same positive image of Thingiverse, which is mostly due to issues that has been tangled around Replicator2 and Terms of Use for Thingiverse. What connects the two items (Replicator2 and Thingiverse) is that both were owned by same company, Makerbot Industries, before it was acquired by 3D Printing industry giant Stratasys in June 2013. The topics were so hot that even a 'occupy' movement was born and some took their 3D models down from Thingiverse.com. Around the same time, an alternative for thingiverse was born. It is based on GitHub and is labelled as githubiverse described by Gary Hodgson. Another alternative candidate for thingiverse is cubehero.com. Neither githubiverse or cubehero.com seem to be popular. Their impact, if none, on digital 3D model sharing remains to be seen. Inspired by the discussions about the future of Thingiverse and other activities around the topic, I decided to do some analysis on 'things' in Thingiverse.com. Is it really about sharing? What kind of licenses are used? .... -- Jarkko Moilanen, M.Soc.Sc PhD Candidate School of Information Sciences http://www.uta.fi/sis/en/index.html Blog: http://blog.ossoil.com