I have decided to change the way this blog is licensed and to start using a Creative Commons licence instead of simple copyright. At the same time, I am giving away the pdf version of Open Fidelity – an A-Z Guide free under the same Creative Commons licence: it is now here.

This is part of a broader rethink of the purpose of the book and blog that I’ve been doing in the last few weeks. I’ve realised that the attempt to make this project into a business has been working against my aims. I would like the world to know more about Open Fidelity, and charging people to read about it hasn’t helped with this.

I’ve been influenced by the open source software movement and also the open access publishing movement. I think the time has come for me to make my work available to all, without unreasonable restrictions, for reuse and distribution, so that as many people can learn about these ideas as possible. I have made a new version of the book for this purpose, which is unchanged in the A-Z pages but has some changes in the copyright page and a couple of pages about future projects have been removed from the end. This version is an unrestricted pdf file, so you can print it and copy text from it.

The terms of the licence I have chosen for both the book and this blog are available here. Briefly, they say that you are free to copy, distribute and display the work under the following conditions: you must give the original author (me) credit; you may not use it for commercial purposes; and you may not alter, transform, or build upon it. For any reuse or distribution, you must make the licence terms clear to others. Any of these conditions can be waived if you get my permission, however. If you would like to translate it into another language, for example, I’d like you to contact me to arrange permission, though I’m very likely to give it.

So if you haven’t yet read Open Fidelity – an A-Z Guide, download a copy now.

I may not be posting very often from now on, but will post occasional announcements when something interesting comes up. Oh, and in case you’re wondering from my previous post, the TV appearance I mentioned was cancelled. The series it was going to be part of isn’t yet out but should still be interesting.

This minibook came out in October 2006, published by Purple Sofa Publications (a publisher set up especially for the purpose). It is entitled Open Fidelity – an A-Z Guide and the full details are on the ‘Books’ tab. If you want to read the distilled wisdom from this blog without any of the waffle, buy the book now (click on the ‘Sales’ tab at the top)!

After that was published and the minor storm in the media about it had abated, I got on with writing what I called ‘the main book’: a full-length book detailing all my research and interviews and ideas. And it was carrying along, slowly, in between me doing other things (like life) and trying to make a living.

But it was beginning to dawn on me that this is going to take a very long time to come to fruition, and that the financial rewards in the end are likely to be pretty small, if anything, unless it becomes a bestseller. So I started to wonder about alternatives ways of getting my ideas into the public domain that would involve less of a delay. I’m not completely altruistic, and I want to make sure I get credited for the parts of all this that are original, and it would be useful to make a little money as well, if only so that I can spend more of my time on the project.

So the result is this blog. At some point another book might arise out of this and non-blog material. In the future there will be adverts on the blog, hopefully unobtrusive ones. I will be looking for ways to make money from the blog without jeopardising the main aim of the project, which is to inform people about the possibilities of honest non-monogamy and help them to avoid cheating on their partners.