Ok well I have been skinning for about 3 years now and this has definitely crossed my mind several times, but more so since the Plus! skinning feature.
A successful skinner is someone who respects their fellow skinners and can do something on their own, but is also not ashamed to ask for help. If you take a look at the skinners of the past you will know that everyone was pretty close and shared a lot of their code and resources.
Personally I do not like people touching my work without permission especially since I take the time to make my resources (unlike some people who just screenshot stuff) and code things up myself.
Its a matter of respect really. If someone asked for my help, then I would gladly show them code from my skins and explain how things work and how they can adapt it to suit their needs.
But on the other hand, if someone goes in and just edits stuff without asking and then releases it as their own work without crediting the original author..... well thats where I say I get a bit pissed off.
In terms of "stealing" ideas I believe that any skin that is based on an existing design or concept eg Microsoft or Apple isn't stealing. The only time it does become stealing is if someone actually rips code or resources to get ahead of the existing skin.
If the idea is homegrown, then thats where even taking the idea is stealing since the person took effort to make something unique. (Like I know I would be absolutely pissed if someone stole parts of Ev0
)
Its inevitable that there will be immature people who don't think about these kinds of things and will steal things. But the way I see it is if they stick to that route then they will never learn skinning properly nor will they ever have a hope of making a skin that will be truly polished or popular.
The only way we wouldn't be able to worry about this would be if the .plsk format was read-only and didn't extract everything to a folder for the public to see. But yeah thats all on Patchou. I'm not fussed about it at the moment since when most people take a look at my hectic code they give up
[Discussion] Skinning copyrights, cloning, and idea recycling
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