Sometimes, the difference between new code on an ancient idea (allowed) and couterfeiting (forbidden) is very slight. This question should be resolved soon because troubles are going to happen. We have opened a thread in our forum (
www.vbulletin-fr.com) to discuss this subject.
In the french community, we have collected permissions from authors before translating hacks. But some of them have made hacks on ideas of other coders. Must we control the old versions ? For instance, you can see this
link. We have the permission to translate Gary W's hacks but we do not have the permission of g-force2k2. I've read the 2 hacks and I do not find similar code but I dont't want to hurt g-force2k2. It would be better to create a clear rule to define what is allowed and what is prohibited.
An idea is not protected but if we don't want to lose plenty of coders, we should be careful to respect the original ideas.
To be careful, I have to stop the release of the french translation of this hack. I think this situation is very bad.