The Steampunk Strat and the Creative Commons.

I don't do commissions.  On occasion I will make things for interesting people and/or purposes but the true product of these efforts for me will always be the web page I write about the process rather than the sale of the item, which is generally made at cost or below. You see, I believe that creating things for pay will be a trap. If I start trying to make a living by making things and selling them I will turn that which began as an excuse to spend time in the workshop into a J.O.B. and that will ruin it for me.  

But it seems each time I complete a new project I am inundated with 'orders' for something I am not offering for sale. I find this troubling because I don't like telling people that they can't have something they really, really want.

So early on I decided  that I would license all of my designs under a creative Commons, Attribution, Share Alike, Non Commercial License with a specific commercial exemption for individuals supporting themselves and their family. You may have seen the CC notice in the sidebar which reads:

Designs by Jake von Slatt on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available here.

This all came about ages ago when I published the first pictures of my Steampunk keyboard and was beset by people who wanted me to make one for them. Like I said, I hated telling folks 'No, I will not make one for you' so instead I said something like: 'It takes so much time to make these, if I made one for you it would easily cost a thousand dollars' I thought that that would be a deterrent, I was shocked at the number of people who said 'Done. Where should I send the money?'  

Of course, I still did not want to make things for pay, for I am a very lazy man. So I asked my friend Rich Nagy (aka Datamancer) if he wanted to make some keyboards for some folks and he replied "Hell yeah" or something to that effect. I still feel a little bad about that sometimes because he's so busy these days I never get to see him at events like Maker Faire and Steamcon any more.

Rich has done an amazing job turning this idea into a business, he has also refined and improved the quality of his keyboards to the point where I am almost embarrassed to show the original because his version is so much better! Furthermore he has added his own creativity to the mix and created a whole line of really excellent products that far surpass my initial poor effort in both design and practical function. This is awesome, cool, and exactly what I had hoped would happen.

Which brings me to the Steampunk Strat, the original version of which rests in the talented hands of Nathaniel Johnstone.  My artwork for the Steampunk Strat is published in the original webpage about the build and Rex Dayton has taken that design and under my Creative Commons license created an anodized aluminum & powder coat version of it that you can buy for your guitar! 

If you're interest in buying one you should contact: rexdayton(AT)me(DOT)com 

Rex tells me that of the original batch of ten, 5 are already spoken for and any that are left will find there way on to eBay within the week, so act now! Offer is for a limit time only!