Jim "unless any of our singer/songwriter friends are happy to declare they are happy to relinquish any rights to their creations" (Jim Carroll 30 Aug 14 - 02:05 PM) I don't know if this qualifies but my Soundcloud page (which I created because some strange individuals sometimes ask me for the words/tune) says "If you want to sing any of these songs at singarounds etc, feel free to adapt them to your own style but, if you're going to sing them, please don't just learn the tune and sing the words from a sheet, songs are for singing not reading!!! (If you forget any words, just make your own up.) The songs are not here to be passively listened to but are for those who want to learn them to sing themselves. The greatest compliment you can pay to a song is to sing it better than the person you learned it from."

I hesitate to call myself a songwriter and I'm not the most friendly person you could meet (so I probably wouldn't qualify as anyone's "singer/songwriter friend") but, as far as I'm concerned, anyone is free to sing my songs: if they can make any money doing so, good luck to them. The only thing I'd object to would be if someone claimed one as their own in order to stop someone else from freely singing it. (Having said that there's little chance of anyone making money from my songs and I actually doubt anyone else would want to claim them!)   

Unlike Musket, I don't believe I write folk songs but as Richard Mellish (30 Aug 14 - 04:03 PM) seems to be suggesting, I tend to believe that the process is still creating folk songs, albeit slowly, and I hope my approach to any songs I've made up is in keeping with that belief/hope.