Steal this

People are strangely reluctant to do this. For years I’ve had polite emails asking permission for things the licence already grants — which is lovely, and also a bit sad, because it means the licence isn’t doing its job. So here is the plain version.

Yes, you can

• Copy any of it, in whole, anywhere
• Translate it into another language
• Draw the characters. Animate them. Sculpt them. Cosplay them
• Write your own stories in these worlds and publish them
• Record an audiobook, make a podcast, put it on a stage
• Print copies for a classroom, a library, a friend, a prison, a hospital
• Remix it into something I’d hate
• Feed it to a machine and learn from it

Three conditions

1. Credit me. Every work page prints the exact line to use, so you don’t have to guess at the format.
2. Don’t sell it. This is the one that needs a conversation — see below.
3. Share alike. What you make from it carries the same licence, so the next person gets what you got.

About the “don’t sell it” part

I know NonCommercial is unfashionable among free-culture people, and I’ve taken some heat for it over the years. I tried it both ways — the whole story is here — and kept the clause for one reason: it means that if someone runs off five hundred copies with my name filed off, I have something to say about it. That happened. It’s why the clause is still there.

It has never once been about the money. If you want to do something commercial, ask, and the answer is almost certainly yes. mcm@1889.ca. No form, no lawyer, no licensing department.

Where the raw materials are

Then tell me

You don’t have to. But I’d love it. In 2003 I wrote that the only way a project like this dies is if nobody cares to continue it — and the entire reason for putting the raw materials out is to find out where they end up.