SFist Cares ... About Sharing

SFist is a long-ass way out of kindergarten but some lessons learned then have stayed with us, like "don't eat paint", that's a good one. Or how about learning how to tie your shoes? Very helpful. But the best and most important lesson we learned is that it's good to share. Sharing is cool because SFist can't have everything but maybe if we share what we have someone else can share what they have, and we covet, right back at us.

That's why we're big fans of Creative Commons. They've taken the complex legal nightmare known as the current copyright law and provided an easy way for us to say that we're hip to the sharing and we hope you are too. SFist itself is published under an "Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike" license. Creative Commons licenses both help you protect your work and share it with people who want to use it in the ways you intend. We're also happy to see the Creative Commons model expanding so quickly to countries other than our own.

The catch. Creative Commons is mostly funded by big donations from fancy big foundations. That's great, because they haven't needed anything from us (they share, we take - it's been a nice ride). And they can continue to operate except that the IRS isn't so fond of that model. To maintain their status as a non-profit, they need to show that the public actually cares about them and is willing to support their cause. Hence, their fall Supporting the Commons campaign. They're asking for donations from individuals at all levels and hope to reach $225,000 by the end of the year. Please consider sending them a little dosh, maybe even enough to get a t-shirt in exchange (or, you can just buy the shirt). Are we the only ones who get an idea from this shirt? Are we sharing too much now?