Shoutbox

So Patchou landed the big deal with the Messenger skinning feature. Many professional designers and graphic artists are starting to have brilliant ideas, some of them are adapting older "raw" dll-modding skins now in .plsk format, whereas others start from scratch, like I did. But there's also coming up a numerous amount of creators taking code and technics, and adapting them for their needs and ideas - the (may no one feel offended) so-called skin-kiddies.

It is no secret that Apple Live Messenger was and is one of the most appreciated and indeed the best-rated skin in the whole skins database. Therefore it's not surprising that some users who want to start their own skin, take my (and Bram's) skin as basis for their own creations. I can name at least 3 skins that are either based partially or entirely on Apple Live Messenger. These are:

• Nao Messenger   by Miamoto
  
• Longhorn Theme Skin   by coolzee
  
• Dheano Live Messenger   by dheano

Now, let's have a look at the different stadiums of code copying.

• Nao Messenger
  This skin is completely based on Apple Live Messenger. Please download the current version, 3.2, from the Skins database. Inspect the extracted folder: you'll find the same file names, the same structure, the same technics, the same SkinInfo layout. Please check now the file called 1075.png. What do you see? Correct: the logo of Apple Live Messenger. Go over to 597.png, what is in there? Right, the same buddies as in Apple Live Messenger. Or just look at the emoticons in 412.png and 414.png, same result there. 640.png is my 640.png, just colorized in green. Or 20066.png: a (blue) Apple icon.
  
  
• Longhorn Theme Skin
  This skin is a development not based on Apple Live Messenger. Nevertheless, just have a quick look at the extracted folder, and check the resources.dll, by opening its properties. What do you see? Here's what you will see. No further comment needed.
  
  
• Dheano Live Messenger
  This is again a skin completely based on ALM. With this one, I have to add the information that dheano added me on messenger, and talked to me about it. I told him I'd be happy if he changed the graphics and not just the colors, and he agreed. So the screenshot you see in the thread liked above is old. At least he will give "based on" credits.

I know Messenger Skinning is a public domain and everybody can do or let what he or she likes to, and I know some of the graphics in Apple Live Messenger are not really much work or cannot be protected because they are not worth. But nevertheless, unlike in scripting where you have to develop your own style of coding, in skinning I guess that there will by much cloning, copying, and even faking soon. The questions I want to have cleared up are: What is protectworthy? How much is a new skinner allowed to copy from an existing creation? How much works does he/she have to put in it, to express their own design instead of reusing others' work? What about the skins database? Should there be a limit of unique-level for each skin to be accepted? What about licensing? Can licenses be applied to skins, such as GPL (allowing modifications is they are published), or a different one, permitting use, but forbiding integration into other skins? Surely it's promotion for a skinner to see his work in many other skins being adopted, but in my opinion, these questions should be (1) discussed, (2) solved, (3) put into written form, and (4) being published in such a prominent place that everybody has to cope with them when developing a skin.

I'd love to hear your opinions and to start a lively discussion.
Regards,