[Digital Jedi]

Originally Posted by Videx

Yes, or not. Where the bigger crime occurs is when an author disappears entirely, and others, in a misguided attempt to protect this unclaimed "copyright", forbid anyone to modify and distribute it.

And so we're stuck waiting for someone to come along and claim to have written all original code to do the same thing. Of course, there's only a few ways to perform a function in a given language, so there's a very good chance a large part of any new code will look exactly like previous code.

Coders drop dead (or drop out) all the time. Let's put some reasonable amount of time on limitations. Maybe 6 months.

Copyright isn't a matter of claim or an invisible stamp the author puts on a thing. You own the copyright to a thing as soon as you create it. By law. You don't have to claim anything, it automatically exists as soon as you affix it into some tangible form. And perpetrating someone else's work is an actual crime. Now I haven't looked at the code to this, and it might be something simple. But it's bad form to just nab someone's code just because folks are impatient to see a new version, even if it is relatively simple. It's not misguided, it's the way the forum was designed. That's what the "reusable code" option when you post a mod is for. If I create something, I don't think my absence for any amount of time should be carte blanch reason for someone else to assign it as their own, if I don't want it to be so.