What happened, I think, is I've operated so long in realms where building on (and crediting) previous work is so much the encouraged norm--as with the work of corporate employee predecessors or open-source contributors--that it's easy to make the mistake of applying this copy-analyze-recreate site design technique across the board.

Live, stumble, learn.

However, in addition to learning to pay very close attention to what uses a creator authorizes, I've also learned that the occasional copyright mine-fields ("Mine! Can't use this." "Mine! No copying.") are mostly places I just want to stay out of.

I want to become like, say, Eric Costello who, in CSS Layout Techniques: for Fun and Profit, goes so far as to say "Feel free to steal all the code you find on this site." (Eric is addressing a particular audience, people like me who want to learn "how to translate typical table based layouts to CSS layouts.") Thanks, Eric.

I want to be like that--knowledgeable, encouraging, generous.

Maybe it's my own values thing--I see encouraging others, and helping others learn, as a much higher priority than laying claim to creative output, however legitimate. I think creativity--and by extension, its output--is an ongoing gift in the first place. I'm in no position to claim ownership for something that's given new to me every day.

When others lay such claim--"don't steal my site design"--it's certainly legit if that's what they want. But man, it puts me off. Of course I'll respect the request, but I'll also immediately lose interest and turn my attention (and in some cases, dollars) elsewhere.
3:02:38 PM |  See also movabletype copyright