Modification Graveyard issue...

[tazzarkin]

Actually, a lot of famous writers have taken ideas from great stories, even paraphrased stories in different forms. I couldn't tell you how many people have taken stories from the bible and turned them into great novels. It even extends to movies, I've heard that Spielberg got his best ideas for Star Wars from the Seven Samurai. If you really want to be precise, almost no idea is truly original. Even the great writers learn by mimicking their favorite authors.

Now, I'm all for copyrighting your work and against plagiarism in all forms, but to say any idea is truly original is ridiculous. Also, in vbulletin, there are only certain ways to do things. There are no programming guides available to teach people how to program here, so the only way to learn is from other programmers. You can't re-invent the wheel everytime.

Now if one person makes a video mod, and then someone else makes a video mod and steals large chunks of code, then it's plagiarism. That's blatant.

But here's my question... If someone has a video mod and has code that reads from the database, and you copy it for a menu mod that has no relation to video (and this is possible), how do you determine if it is plagiarism?

It's so hard because there are only so many ways to do things in vbulletin. Unless it is blatant, I don't see how you can make a distinction.
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Originally Posted by RLShare

JACQUII, I have some questions. If someone writes a short story, and posts it online for others to enjoy to do you believe that everyone should have the right to take paragraphs of it and use it in their own works just because it was released freely for people to enjoy? And if you do not why would not equate the same logic to coders? Do you seriously think that low of coders that they do not deserve the same rights as a writer posting stories?

Your analogy should have been more along the lines of someone stealing chapters from a novel or paragraphs from an essay. Re-read your own post, can you honestly tell me that equating mere words to the work of coders is not degrading and trivializing of the work they supply for free.