Leo Babauta from Zen Habits hase once again proved to be one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever had the privilege of reading. He has lifted all the copyrights from his posts and his recent e-book, Zen To Done (buy it here) and wrote about this in his recent post: Open Source Blogging: Feel Free to Steal my Content.
It’s a brave move, and one with quite a few cons which would seem obvious to any seasoned blogger: people can steal his every article and repost it without giving Leo any credit for it, such reposting will likely hurt his website’s rankings in search engines and search results. Someone could reprint his book and never even mention him, let alone pay him for his wonderful writing.
Still, Leo found his own reasons for releasing all the content, and preferred to worry about potential problems when they actually happen (or maybe he decided not to worry about them at all). I regard this as a definite sign of a true greatness. Leo focuses on writing his content and helping as many people as he can, and if sharing all of his wisdom for free hurts his website rankings or makes him earn less, he is willing to accept this.
In his post, Leo says that he would prefer for people to give him credit for using his works, but if it’s about money – they don’t have to pay him anything, and he will be happy simply knowing that some part of the money they make goes to some good cause.
Leo admits he’s no Shakespeare, but I can clearly see he takes every right step to becoming a truly admired and well-known author – someone who writes for the people, not for the editors, and aims for the greater good for all, not higher e-book sales.
Leo has inspired many bloggers to start their projects or to change the way they blog. His blog is one of a very few which I always have the time and motivation to read in my Google Reader. He is one of the leaders in personal development community, and has a very recognizable style to his posts, indeed bringing simplicity to many of the questions and challenges in our lives.
Well done, Leo! I’m sure your blog will do just fine. Keep the great content coming, and if you ever write another book and decide to sell it, I’ll buy it again. Your credit, your popularity and your thousands of readers and followers are well deserved. Thank you!