Frankly, giving freebies isn't as much fun as it used to be.

First, you practically have to pay to do so. A few years ago there were several free webspaces with no ads, no linking restrictions, and no bandwidth limitations. Good luck finding those any more. So now, it's either suffer the rule of Tripod and the like, keep downloads very small so they can be uploaded to forums, or pay for web space. That's pretty limiting.

Second, there are some, shall we say, UNIQUE people in the community now. I implemented my courtesy-ware licenses after a weekend in which THREE separate people harassed me about freebies, one of them pretending to be a law enforcement officer and accusing me of piracy. If I hadn't gotten a huge warm Poser fuzzy the Monday morning after, I would have just thrown in the towel right there. A vast majority of the people who do contact me are very nice, but I've seen e-mail to other freebie providers that would strike a nun dead. If the provider doesn't get enough "Thanks, you rock" e-mails to balance it out, I don't blame them a bit for saying "Ah, to hell with every last one of ya".

Then there's the Poser Freebie Bitch and Moan Club. There are some days it seems freebie providers can't do anything right any more. It's not packaged like I want. It's too big. It's too small. It's too restricted. The quality isn't good enough. It should be Public Domain. You're greedy. You're stupid. You're a jerk.

The way I was raised, if you recieved a gift you didn't like, you smiled, said thank you, and then put it in the Goodwill Box when the giver wasn't around so that someone else could get the benefit from it. I didn't think I was old enough for that idea to become outdated, but I guess I was wrong.

If your neck is going to be as far out on the line and your butt going to be roasted just as often either way, you might as well sell.

The thing is, I don't think the community has gotten nastier. I just think that the "vocal minority" has shifted into nastier groups, and the friendly majority has said the same nice things so many times they no longer think its necessary. If we want to get a more "sharing" community, we're going to have to go out of our way to be more friendly towards sharers. One nasty message does a lot of damage, and the TLC investment to counteract that has been kinda slim.