There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but that's my decision to make, not anyone elses :) It's also important to remember the benefits of posting modifications here. I released quite a few in my earlier days here, and offered regular support throughout the forums. It served as a gateway for me to get lots of clients. Now, if Joe Bloggs comes along and takes one of my old mods, and releases it with a few fixes, who's to say that he won't get any potential commercial benefit.

At the end of the day you can argue, whine and say what you like about this subject, but peoples work remains copyrighted to them, and no-one else. Nothing you do, vBulletin.org does, can change that :)

Well the way I gather it, He wouldn't be allowed to start a new thread with an updated version of your hack. Instead it would still be the original thread he takes over, with you still listed as the original Author.

With maybe his name added as a supporting Author who has taken over an abandoned hack "in the same thread". So you still get credit for being the person who created it (and people don't get confused about that fact), and he gets credit for taking it over as abandoned. Thats my way of thinking anyway.

The way your talking about it, is as though you don't care about the fact you might have an abandoned hack here that members want to use, and for you to support it. Just as long as it drives traffic from here to your site. Nice! That said, if it was done the way I pointed out above your quote - you would still get the traffic. :)

Now it makes much more sense why vB.org send them to the graveyard. Basically there trying to force members to support there hacks to avoid situations were a members might think that way and just release a hack with no intentions of supporting it just to get traffic. plus of course to stop members installing hacks that may cause security issues with there forum etc.

But like you say, I guess you own the copyrights as Author and have the last say in the matter, so things will never change.

We're not stopping people from doing that. Anyone can ask the author for permission to continue to develop their modifications.
Coders have no obligation to support their modifications, and do not have to hand over the development of their modification to others. We will never ask coders to support their modifications or risk having it taken over by someone else.

That doesn't make much sense, when the coder has vanished.

Nothing we can do about that though.

You can be proactive by either making a ToS inclusion about it or let the coder decide how to handle it by adding a yes/no tick box to the modification's thread. (As Paul has announced)

Some of you guys are taking things to far about this.

First of all, the TOS doesn't need to be made. If I or anyone else decide to vanish, this does NOT give right for other coder to grab our codes and update it for another version.
However, you can use the same idea of the modification, but do your own coding from stratch (this way, you can support it).

We're not making any benefit from you guys using it on your board and/or supporting the modification.

I think the checkbox will pretty much solve all your guys issues.

Also it will be one more reason to install a mod, if the coder allows people to take it over if he goes away.

Not sure a checkbox would work that way. I'm guessing the checkbox would give the coder an "option". And most coders replies here indicate they would not allow it .

IMO if the TOS were rewritten, you will see a lot less hacks being posted which is a lot worst on the entire community. Keep in mind, these hacks are free and were written out of the goodness of coders hearts to help everyone else (at least for me anyway). Coders are nowhere forced to support their hacks.

If a coder has a copywrite like; Do not repost this hack without my permission, then it's pretty obvious you need their permission to edit and repost.

Just my 15cents