As being someone involved in Open Source in some aspect since 1994 when I was porting code to Linux and passing back changes to Lesstif group. I find the openness of the community to be a nice change in some respects. However, when I move over to writers and want-a-be writers I find this odd half-openness that feels queer.

Let me put it in clear and simple terms. Most people wanting to become writers want people to read their works and give them good feedback (well, in most cases they want praise feedback). However, they don’t want to broadcast their writings to the world. The reasoning behind it all is how the view copyrights, “first publishing” and other things most commonly discussed in those circles.

Now, I get why published authors get cagey. You can’t copyright a book title and therefor you don’t want to disclose such information until the book is being shipped. Most of the fear is someone hijacking the title before your book comes to market.

The “First Publishing” rights is something I don’t get. Yes, all publishers want unpublished stories that will reap them the most money, but that doesn’t mean that pushing stuff out to the web is “publishing.” Nor that they wouldn’t pick up a low volume book that is gaining popularity with lots of room for profit left in it (If this was the case, then most books from popular authors would never get republished with their current publisher).

Even more humorous is all the people blabbing about copyrights. I’ll say this once and never again here. EVERYTHING YOU WRITE IS COPYRIGHTED AS LONG AS YOU STATE IT IS (and even if you don’t). BUT…… (And it’s a large one at that) Your copyright may not mean jack if it isn’t registered with the library of congress. Thus you may have a copyright infringement that could be unenforceable if you gave the copy of the story to one person or to a million.

Which brings me back to this half-open community. The want-a-be writers want to be read, they want feedback but are scared their ideas will be hijacked. Or maybe outright plagiarism. I find it amusing; since most of the ideas are stolen from others to start with.

Case in point, a few weeks ago I received an email from my cousin about their little writing site. They were worried about google and all these others search engines browsing their forums and “stealing” their work (or at least their first publishing rights). My response is robot.txt and
don’t publish anything that is of value to you NEAR ANY OPEN FORUMS.

If you look around my website you may see references to things I’m working on, but rarely do I push any content to my website if I’m trying to publish it. I guess my whole thing is this distrust within the writing community (or distrust of others outside your little writing group in the larger community), but the need to embarrass the community in order to gain any real feedback on your work. It’s how the software community was back in the shareware days.