Poll

If you could license your paperwork, what license would you choose?

All Rights Reserved. (Users must pay you to use your paperwork.)
2 (6.5%)
Creative Commons. (Users may use and adapt but must credit you.)
10 (32.3%)
MIT/GPL. (Users may use and adapt but their versions must also be free to use & adapt.)
13 (41.9%)
Public Domain. (Anyone can use it or adapt it, no credit back nor restrictions required.)
2 (6.5%)
I don't own my paperwork, my employer does. I cannot license it.
2 (6.5%)
I don't use any of my own paperwork, it's all adapted from others' work.
2 (6.5%)
Other
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 31

Author Topic: POLL: Paperwork Ownership  (Read 8403 times)

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Bwoodbury

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Re: POLL: Paperwork Ownership
« Reply #15 on: Jan 21, 2014, 01:30 pm »
PDF is the only way I share or submit paperwork.

If I'm sharing with a student it requires them to at least go through the process of recreating the paperwork and thinking about how/why I might have done something.

If it's a company and they want to use my template, they have to ask me.

It also has my name embedded in the footer, so anyone publishing or posting would automatically be acknowledging that I made it.

Jonas_A

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Re: POLL: Paperwork Ownership
« Reply #16 on: Jan 29, 2014, 02:12 am »
As a student, I'm fascinated by this argument...

At my uni, we keep several dozen old prompt copies assembled by past students, and it's the most useful resource we have. We all love being able to compare other people's paperwork and pick and choose either the best or use it as inspiration to make something that fits our needs. (I recently compared five different props tracking templates with my SM to find something that suited both of us).

Many of my peers and I are completely happy to share our paperwork. Don't worry about attributing, change as you wish and if someone asks, you should just give it to them, too; that's our shared attitude. And we love it. Yes, some stuff isn't useful - so it doesn't get used by anyone else! We sort of consider it a paperwork version of natural selection. The good mutations will survive and thrive, and the ones not so well suited will die out. If you think this is silly, I'd like to point out that this process has continually improved the quality of paperwork by all SM students across the uni for the past half decade and has allowed us all to do our jobs better.

Do I think there's a place for some paperwork to be proprietary? Perhaps. I've seen some masterful solutions to managing some paperwork via FileMaker and I would never consider asking the creator to give me the file so I can use it. Having said that, I'd appreciate it if people didn't get precious over me using their particular pre-show checklist or similar. Will I ask if I can use your documents? Definitely. But consider just how much of a professional edge it really gives you, and whether helping train people and improve the quality of work across the industry is more important before you say no.

As for the SMNetwork forms collection: I can't count the number of times it has either saved my backside when I've needed something in a hurry (not lazy, just stressed and under the pump) or helped me devise better ways to do my own paperwork. So thank you, everyone who does support it. If you ever find your work in a show I'm working on and it's because I've found it here, please let me know so I can buy you a drink.


Tempest; I like your idea. If a company gave me templates, I'd be delighted to put whatever they want on their paperwork however they want it. They pay me, I do what they want.

sievep: I'm with you on this. And I feel that whether I list things in a certain order or use a certain font or not may make someone else happy, but at the end of the day, paperwork isn't the heart of this job. People are.