Well on a regular basis I get alerted of people taking my skins and just modifying an image or two and then trying to re-release it as their own work. It is a problem that most of the experienced skinners are getting and quite frankly it is getting annoying.
While we do normally get a good laugh at some of them, for the most part it just annoys us. We put a lot of time and effort into our work so that we may share our creations with the public and it is really frustrating to see someone just disrespect the effort we have made by just taking our work and using it without permission or crediting.
One thing skin rippers do not know is the fact that skins there were created based on another skin unauthorized will not be allowed into the skins database. So it is a waste of time for those wanting to have something in the database.
Now I do understand that skinning is quite difficult as there is no real base to work off and you have to first extract resources and make UIFiles work the way they should. In my early days there where numerous times where I wanted to give up and it was difficult to get a result that worked. But of course editing another persons skin is not the answer as you will never learn anything and could possibly be open to people starting a flame war with you.
Now I wrote the skinning guides in an attempt to squash skin ripping, but of course it is not working as well as it should. I am starting to see that the majority of skin ripping that is occurring is being done by people who know nothing about xml, css or skinning and are too afraid/lazy to try and learn it.
So I am going to work to release everyone a skin in which they can base their skin on, it will essentially be an open source skin that will contain Windows Live Messenger's graphics, but they will be restructured to make things easier for people. It will be multi-version compatible and will be less restricted in the sense that MSNRLE dependency will be non existent. On top of that I will be coding in pre-translated options to make things available to people who do not speak English.
I am hoping that in making this skin, it will help combat the rising problem in skin ripping. With the Messenger Plus! skinning contest coming soon, the last thing I want to see is thousands of skin rips entering the database.
Of course with this skin there will be restrictions, in order to use the skin you must keep the credit that appears in the skin. This credit simply thanks all those involved (myself and my translation team).
Anyway I am hoping this will lift the standard of skins and will make skin ripping non-existent.
Thoughts and comments on this are appreciated. I would like to hear input on those who would be interested in seeing this happen. Please keep in mind its going to be a long road to get this working, so please be patient.
Status updates of the project will be posted via
http://designevolved.net and I will be checking both this page and the one on the design evolved forums for comments etc.
Willz
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