Interesting, so basicly your saying Zack that any hacks released here for free as open source (which they basicly are). People on this site could take them away, play around with the code a little and sell them as there own?

Not without the permission of the original author they cannot as that will breach copyright... ;)

Chris

No, just because something is released here does not mean its "open source software". Most addons etc are Visual Source, and under the same style of license that vBulletin Operates under. Anotherwords its theirs untill they say otherwise.

I understood that both vBulletin itself and the hacks/modifications on here were released as "visible source" not "open source", meaning you are free to view and modify most of the code (generally excluding copyright notices) for your own use but NOT to re-release it elsewhere.

The is a major difference which should be remembered.

Edit: Whoops! Just realised Zachery just said that. I'll get me coat and no large error!

I know of about 5 or 6 sites that re-release hacks from here unfortuantely.

A recent hack of mine had a link in the description to a flash demo hosted on my own site. When looking through the referers in my site logs, all of these other sites showed up. When visiting the sites I found that they'd just copied/pasted my description (including the flash demo and screenshots) with most of them managing to leave my name out of it completely.

But... saying that, I can't say I'm too worried about it. If I charged for my hacks then I might be more concerned, but since my hacks are all available for download by anybody on my own site, I don't really mind if these sites don't ask my permission before adding my hacks.

Thanks,
Alan.

I hate to be one to disagree with you Zach but that is about as good for the vb.org comunity as pulling the plug on its server. Anyway I have been told by the "new" author he was given full copyright by Velocd for that open source hack as all Velocd's hacks are open source going by his profile, I am still sure if Velocd did hand over the copyright he wouldnt have wanted it to be used in this way "of totally being removed from the community and available at a pay site" because that would be completely against the way vb.org has run in the past. Its one thing to take your own work away its another to take away a modification that was given to the community for your own advantages. Charging for premium support is fine, the hack should remain at its home which is here with the usuall no guarantees of support as its all done on a community basis which has allways worked well.

I would really like to see Velocd pop in and confirm he didnt mind the mod being used in the way it now has been.

I would say vb.org really needs to look at its policies regarding this becasue now its official that if a hack is handed over which many probably have been without any exceptions so many can now be taken away in the same manner. In which case vb.org will be lucky if its still viable after v4.

If he released his software under an open sourced license, anyone could take it, continue the development, fork it and continue development otherwise. Its the problems of OSS. We cannot force anyone to license their work in some specific way.

This is very true and not in dispute, people removing stuff from this comunity which wasnt theirs originally is a personal issue as I feel thats not the right way to go about it, personally I think he has done more damage to himself than good by doing it as most of the community is well aware of the potential snowball if it was to become common practice, would have been much better marketing and retained full respect by retaining what was orignally someone elses work in the originally targeted community and used that in a much more respectable way to get whatever else he wanted off the ground.

However on the fork subject if someone was to re rekindle a hack and retain it here within the comunity that had all ready been ported forward previously and then forked off elsewhere theres a name issue which is going to cause confusion, normal practice is the fork takes a new name.

due to all the complaints lodged over our hacks being ripped the host has closed
down the offending site http://onlinevnnet.com/

http://www.piratereports.com

you can report sites that are pirating hacks to Howard,,
he will do what he can ;)