BurdaStyle announced this morning that they will be charging for the “official” patterns on their site, save for the basics and some smaller projects.

As part of our plan to grow BurdaStyle and to better serve our members we will need to start charging for some of our patterns. BurdaStyle patterns developed from contest winners will still be free, as will some popular basics and smaller projects. Patterns uploaded by members will still be free, as will all the other areas of our website. Of course, everything will still be open-source, which means copyright-free, and therefore available for alteration and replication, and open for you to base a business on.

Part of me is bummed by this, I never bothered saving any of the patterns that I liked to my computer, just bookmarked them, and a lot of the ones I liked are now listed as paid. I haven’t ventured into clothes making except for a couple of pairs of trousers for my son and Burdastyle was a massive source of inspiration to me to one day wander into the “knit” section of Spotlight

On the other hand, I do understand the business model, and running that kind of high traffic site has got to cost money and sometimes advertising alone can’t sustain that, I would rather the site still be around with the free user created patterns and a paid section that just disappear completely.

And as @ess_jay said, it was just a bit too good to be true

What are your thoughts on Burda Style’s recent announcement? Will you be buying any patterns or just relying on user created ones?