Shoutbox

I don't think much more needs to be said. Most important stuff is already said by mynetx and warmth.


However, don't forget that skinning is much stricter "coding" than scripting. Indeed, with scripting each programmer has his own style and you often can program a function in more than one way. With skinning you can't, it is much stricter and something can often only be done in one way. I don't see this as "stealing" if more people are using a certain same style to color their contactlist background or whatever.

However, if the "stealing" is done in such an obvious way like in the Nao Messenger skin, then yes, it should be discouraged and the author should have more respect and at least ask for permission to use the existing graphics. But, you can't protect yourself from this. What can be done is refusing such skins in the database, which I would totally agree with in this case.

As an author of a skin, what you can do is report the skin you think has stolen stuff from your original skin, and contact its author to tell him/her that he/she need permission from you to use your graphics.