Share and Share Alike

I have been meaning to get around to this for a while: all the material I post on my blog (that is of my own creation) is now free for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia license.

“Wow,” I hear you say, “I have no idea what that means.” Well, you should probably take a look at the link then – it explains the license in surprisingly clear terms. This is one of the wonderful points about Creative Commons licensing: it doesn’t hide behind difficult to understand terminology. Your rights as a creator of material, as well as your rights as a consumer of material, couldn’t really be presented more effectively. In the case of the license I have chosen for this site:

You are free:

• to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
• to Remix – to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

• Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
• Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

There are also some other points with Creative Commons licensing, which still uphold ideas like fair use and moral rights.

So why have I decided upon this license? One of the big hopes I have had for this blog was to use my own experiences to encourage and inspire others. At their best, Internet communities can be unimaginably helpful to people getting started in any number of vocations. I can’t overstate how much more I would struggle with my technical work, if it wasn’t for the kind assistance of many, many faceless people on the Internet.

Because of my own experience, I want to offer what I can to others. However, I do want them to pass on that attitude in their own work – hence the ‘Share Alike’ clause in the license.

I’m not arrogant enough to think that there are queues of people clambering over each other to use lines of code from my work, but if you do find anything useful here, please do go ahead and use it – just post a link to your own work, so everyone can see the results.