Dumped in an inconvenient situation

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Let me make a few things clear:

Copyright is not something that we (vB.org) invented or put inplaceto annoy anyone. It is international law. The only difference between us and some other sites is maybe that we try to stay within legal boundaries.

Copyright applies to the physical coding, not to ideas. Anyone is free to write a new modification based of an existing idea, but they can not reuse (significant) coding from another author without permission.

There is no deciding or arguing on this, it is simple international law.

PS If a modification is withdrawn for reasons other then the request of the author (in which case is should be up to the author to motivate such a withdrawal to the users of his work) it is always done because staff looks into a modification after it was reported by members. We usually do not actively go check upon modifications trying to find a reason to withdraw it.