This post was inspired by a currently Featured Post by Sally Cheeseman about plagiarism, and a comment I left in a blog this morning about making presumptions.

I'm always cautioning people to not fall into the trap of making presumptions about other people, and that applies to what, on the surface, might appear to be plagiarism.

For example, recently I gave our ActiveRain community full approval to use my "pesky home inspector" list. I did not place any limitations on how someone can use my list, nor do I require that they acknowledge me as the source. They are free to "plagiarize" me until their hearts are content. That, of course, presents a quandary for me.

What if someone finds my list on my site and the same, or a very similar list, on someone else's? Perhaps there will be a date to prove who had it first, but is the damage already done? Or maybe I decided to let everyone use it first, and then a year later I decided to use it, too. Should I not allow any of my work to be used freely for the common good? Hmmmmm.

Additionally, my "pesky home inspector" list has been around for about seven years, and I have given about 10,000 home inspectors over at the International Association of Certified Home Inspectors free reign to use it as their own, too.

I also have about a thousand documents that I've written over the years that I've posted in various places and those documents are also allowed to be used by anyone who happens upon them with no restrictions.

In fact, if you were to roam around the home inspector blogs here at ActiveRain, you'll find that the first posts by many of those inspectors sound familiar. Even the writing style is eerily familiar. That's because it's a document written by me that they have free reign to use with no restrictions on where they use it.

Much of what I do is like that. If you find it on my web site, in my ActiveRain blog, or anywhere else that I visit on the Internet, and you think it can help you or your Clients and Customers, you should feel free to use it.

If you'd like to tell me you're using it, great. If you'd like to acknowledge me as the source, that's great, too. If you'd just like to make off with it, that's also fine.

Could I charge for these documents? Sure. But I don't want to be Bill Gates. I only want to make a comfortable living and help as many people along the way as I possibly can, so free is often better than fee.

I'll return to my previous question, though. If I post something somewhere and give people the freedom to use it without acknowledgement, and they do, does it damage both of us if someone finds both of us? What does Google think?

Notwithstanding the answer, don't be too quick to make judgments about others and their business practices. Dig a little deeper and you just might find that all is well with the world. And if by chance it's not, I've found that a little courtesy note to the people involved usually results in action appropriate as necessary.