1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,280 All right. So we've learned how to register our work, and we know where to put notices on it if we want to. Fantastic. 2 00:00:07,430 --> 00:00:11,340 Now what? What do you actually want to do with what you've made? 3 00:00:11,340 --> 00:00:13,850 Maybe you've made an app, and you want to sell it. 4 00:00:13,850 --> 00:00:18,960 Great. Or you've made a website, and you've put the copyright notices on it, and you're all set. 5 00:00:18,960 --> 00:00:24,990 Awesome. But have you ever given serious thought to sharing what you've done with the world? 6 00:00:24,990 --> 00:00:31,130 I don't mean just making the website live, I mean really sharing your work. Free as in freedom. 7 00:00:32,520 --> 00:00:37,850 First of all, let's not confuse the idea of sharing with the idea of giving away. 8 00:00:37,850 --> 00:00:43,550 Those terms get used interchangeably sometimes, and they're really different things. 9 00:00:43,550 --> 00:00:50,620 Creative Commons licenses make it easy to share your creative works with the rest of the world in a clear, concise way. 10 00:00:50,620 --> 00:00:54,870 But with Creative Commons, it's also clear that the work is still yours. 11 00:00:54,870 --> 00:00:57,830 You're not giving anything away. 12 00:00:57,830 --> 00:01:02,340 This isn't a gift you're not going to get back like giving a copy of your favorite video game to a friend. 13 00:01:02,340 --> 00:01:06,750 You're letting that friend borrow the game with an understanding that they won't break it, scratch it, 14 00:01:06,750 --> 00:01:09,920 or give it to anybody else and that they'll give it back to you when they're done. 15 00:01:09,920 --> 00:01:14,250 That's licensing, and that's also sharing. 16 00:01:14,250 --> 00:01:18,150 You've got to ask yourself why you're making what you're making. 17 00:01:19,270 --> 00:01:22,080 If your priority is to make something that you're going to sell 18 00:01:22,080 --> 00:01:25,170 then by all means don't share that app freely. 19 00:01:25,170 --> 00:01:28,600 Make people pay for subscriptions to your site, whatever it might be. 20 00:01:28,600 --> 00:01:32,310 Sell your songs or your movie. That's totally fine. 21 00:01:32,310 --> 00:01:36,280 But are you starting a blog where you express your opinions about web design? 22 00:01:36,280 --> 00:01:38,840 Is that font you've been working on something that you want to sell, 23 00:01:38,840 --> 00:01:41,500 or do you just want people to use it? 24 00:01:41,500 --> 00:01:46,280 Sharing really does have advantages. Sometimes they're monetary. 25 00:01:46,280 --> 00:01:52,120 I mean you can make an app and put it in the app store and sell it for $1, and maybe people will buy it, 26 00:01:52,120 --> 00:01:56,260 but you make that app free, and that download count is going to skyrocket. 27 00:01:56,260 --> 00:01:59,450 So do you want to make money, or do you want the attention? 28 00:01:59,450 --> 00:02:05,680 Look at CSS-Tricks. We talk a lot about Chris Coyier and CSS-Tricks here at Treehouse. 29 00:02:05,680 --> 00:02:09,080 He's a buddy of the site, and we love him, but look at what he's doing. 30 00:02:09,080 --> 00:02:12,590 Here's the license agreement for CSS-Tricks. 31 00:02:12,590 --> 00:02:20,270 Chris says, and I quote, "I don't give two hoots what you do with any of the design or code you find here. 32 00:02:20,270 --> 00:02:28,800 Actually, I do. I hope you take it and use it, uncredited, on a super commercial website and get wicked rich off it." 33 00:02:28,800 --> 00:02:36,370 So there it is. There's all the licensing terms we needed to understand in 3 really funny sentences. 34 00:02:36,370 --> 00:02:40,280 So how does CSS-Tricks make any money or even support their hosting costs? 35 00:02:40,280 --> 00:02:48,040 Well they sell ads. Seeing ads for a bit so that I can get some great CSS code for my site seems like a fair trade-off to me. 36 00:02:48,040 --> 00:02:52,100 Chris makes money by sharing what he does so freely. 37 00:02:52,100 --> 00:02:56,160 CSS-Tricks really does sharing and licensing so well. 38 00:02:56,160 --> 00:03:00,730 It's easy to find that license on the site, and it's easy to read and understand. 39 00:03:00,730 --> 00:03:06,830 If you want to share something, it's just a matter of licensing your work properly and clearly. 40 00:03:06,830 --> 00:03:11,760 You make it easy for people to find out that your work can be shared in the first place. 41 00:03:11,760 --> 00:03:16,240 You can include a license on your website or your app or whatever you've made as well. 42 00:03:16,240 --> 00:03:22,460 Remember there's no specific way a license has to be written, so just as long as you include all the things that are important to you. 43 00:03:22,460 --> 00:03:27,630 Do you want to share your work but only as long as it's not being used by somebody commercially? 44 00:03:27,630 --> 00:03:30,000 Say that. 45 00:03:30,000 --> 00:03:34,370 Do you only want to make your work free for people named Fred? Do it. 46 00:03:34,370 --> 00:03:37,780 Just be clear about it and make it easy to find. 47 00:03:37,780 --> 00:03:41,960 You probably don't even need to do all that work yourself though if sharing is your goal. 48 00:03:41,960 --> 00:03:49,020 Creative Commons is far and away the easiest way to freely share your work on the Internet at the moment. 49 00:03:49,020 --> 00:03:52,760 Every one of those licenses includes attribution. That's credit. 50 00:03:52,760 --> 00:03:55,700 That's crucial for most artists. 51 00:03:55,700 --> 00:04:00,210 No matter how much you're sharing something, your name is still attached to it. 52 00:04:00,210 --> 00:04:02,210 You're still retaining that authorship. 53 00:04:02,210 --> 00:04:08,030 Sharing your work freely can actually be a great way to make a name for yourself in your chosen field. 54 00:04:08,030 --> 00:04:13,490 But if you don't require that attribution, nobody's going to know you made it in the first place. 55 00:04:14,730 --> 00:04:19,610 Creative Commons has a really simple tool on their website that you can use to both pick a license 56 00:04:19,610 --> 00:04:22,500 and display that license in your project. 57 00:04:22,500 --> 00:04:26,520 You can click on licenses at the top of the Creative Commons homepage, 58 00:04:26,520 --> 00:04:29,480 and then choose choose a license. 59 00:04:29,480 --> 00:04:35,740 It will ask you a couple of simple questions, and then the license will update based on your answers. 60 00:04:35,740 --> 00:04:39,790 From there you fill out some info about your creation, and there you go. 61 00:04:39,790 --> 00:04:45,860 You've got an embed code you can easily add to your website that displays everything people need to know, 62 00:04:45,860 --> 00:04:53,080 and that link, when someone clicks it, takes them to a really easy-to-read and understand page outlining the license. 63 00:04:53,080 --> 00:04:55,640 The work's already been done for you. 64 00:04:55,640 --> 00:05:00,840 Creative Commons is easy to use, and more and more people are learning about it every day, 65 00:05:00,840 --> 00:05:03,380 but you do what you want to with your work. 66 00:05:03,380 --> 00:05:05,380 You share it however you want. 67 00:05:05,380 --> 00:05:08,250 Chris Coyier does it his way. You can do it yours. 68 00:05:08,250 --> 00:05:13,470 But take a second and really think about some of those things that you've made or that you're working on right now. 69 00:05:13,470 --> 00:05:17,190 What's the point? Why are you doing it? 70 00:05:17,190 --> 00:05:19,900 Would sharing be something that you could benefit from 71 00:05:19,900 --> 00:05:22,490 and that would benefit the work you're creating? 72 00:05:22,490 --> 00:05:28,810 Would sharing it be not just beneficial to you but to the millions of people out there who could potentially use it? 73 00:05:28,810 --> 00:05:31,330 Do some soul searching. 74 00:05:31,330 --> 00:05:34,040 I think you might be surprised at how you end up feeling. 75 00:05:34,970 --> 00:05:39,910 Before we move on, there's just one thing about sharing your work that you need to understand. 76 00:05:39,910 --> 00:05:46,630 Once you share your work, once you pick that license, whether it's homemade or Creative Commons or GPL 77 00:05:46,630 --> 00:05:49,720 or whatever it is, you can't take it back. 78 00:05:49,720 --> 00:05:52,100 Think about WordPress. 79 00:05:52,100 --> 00:05:56,070 What would happen if they decided that WordPress was no longer GPL licensed? 80 00:05:56,070 --> 00:06:03,240 It was all rights reserved, no one could modify WordPress anymore, no more free themes, shut the community down. 81 00:06:03,240 --> 00:06:06,780 That's crazy, and it's not fair. 82 00:06:06,780 --> 00:06:11,330 I may not have signed a piece of paper when I downloaded WordPress, but we had a license agreement. 83 00:06:11,330 --> 00:06:15,300 That was clear. They can't make that more restrictive. 84 00:06:15,300 --> 00:06:17,380 The GPL doesn't allow it. 85 00:06:17,380 --> 00:06:19,390 Neither does Creative Commons. 86 00:06:19,390 --> 00:06:24,920 You can get more permissive, you could have an attribution non-commercial license 87 00:06:24,920 --> 00:06:30,410 and change it to just plain attribution if you wanted to removing those commercial restrictions, 88 00:06:30,410 --> 00:06:36,190 but you can't just add them back, and you can't expect people who've licensed the work previously 89 00:06:36,190 --> 00:06:38,210 to have to live by the new rules. 90 00:06:38,210 --> 00:06:43,220 That's like giving your friend that video game for his birthday, and then calling him a week later and asking for it back. 91 00:06:43,220 --> 00:06:45,610 It's not cool. 92 00:06:45,610 --> 00:06:50,750 So when you pick a license of any kind for your work, especially one that encourages sharing, 93 00:06:50,750 --> 00:06:53,150 definitely give it some thought first. 94 00:06:53,150 --> 00:06:56,840 Sharing is a wonderful thing. The Internet could not exist without it. 95 00:06:56,840 --> 00:07:00,670 But changing your mind later on and trying to take it all back just isn't possible.