As I promised earlier, here is the draft of the "terms" that I want to include as part of my pattern for the shawl. It seems reasonable, and it seems to reflect my interests in both promoting freedom and the open exchange of ideas, but more importantly in making it completely clear that I'm not writing this pattern out of philanthropy.
The truth is that by refusing to restrict downloads giving away copies of this pattern means that more and more people will be able to see the pattern and this blog (which is, in the long term, good for me and my pocketbook). The basic idea is that, only a certain percentage of people are going to pay anyway, and with luck by unrestricting the download, more people will see the pattern, and therefore a great number of people will pay. I think/hope the economics work out, but we'll just have to wait and see.
In any case, below the fold, you'll see a copy of the draft of the statement of this idea. Please give feedback and commentary either in the comments or via email. I look forward to hearing form you.
The rights to this pattern are entirely the property of the author; except in the instance of this copy, in which you the knitter hold (quite literally.) Very likely, you downloaded this pattern after paying for it, in which case I thank you. But it's also possible that you have the pattern downloaded the pattern from free from my own website, or after receiving a copy from a friend or acquaintance.
This is alright. I don't think it's fair to expect that you buy patterns sight unseen, and I think that spreading copies of this pattern to your friends and fellow knitters is without question a good thing for this pattern and my design career: tell people about this pattern.
At the same time, this pattern is not free. If you decide to knit this pattern or value it's contribution to the knitting community, I request that you pay for the pattern, and you can find instructions for this at http://tychoish.com/knitting/. If the price is a barrier to you, or would like to contribute more to support future designs, there are options at http://tychoish.com/knitting/ and you should feel free to contact me by email at garen@tychoish.com.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
This means that under no condition should you derive profit from the sale of this pattern or take credit for the pattern. I would also ask that if you share the pattern that you only distribute this pattern in full, including all charts and instruction. I would, however, be delighted if you, after (buying) and knitting this pattern decided to design your own eclectic pi shawl.
Note: This will appear as a PDF file that I expect people to print out, hence the literal display of URLs. And by the time this launches, the tychoish.com/knitting/ page will, of course, be configured to contain links to pages that discuss donations and the store.
Onward and Upward!