Originally Posted by Lykofos
Ever though that the AddOn author wants to lock down where his/her AddOn is distributed? There are many reasons why, users support being a big one. Sure an AddOn author can include links and such inside the AddOn to point to a support page. However, how many users acutally look inside the AddOn's folder? Not many and the ones that do usually know what they are doing in the first place. However 95% of users will never look inside the AddOn folder. Those same users will usually go straight back to wherever they download the AddOn from to post something like "It's broke, fix it". This fragments the support pages plus any bug tracking system an author may use. AddOns are usually written for fun, having to chase down bug reports from umpteen different sites is not fun. In fact is time consuming and in this day, time is precious. There is just not enough of it.
A license that works for music and images usually does not work well for code. Music and images once they are created do not require user support. Code does.
I for once really wish users would stop asking authors to distribute the author's work under a license a user wants. Most AddOns are written to fulfill something that annoyed an author or the author though was a good idea. If users keep annoying authors, those authors may just decide to quit writing those AddOns that the users love. Think about it before you ask release under License X
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Thats a good argument but annoy the users and no one will use if its too restrictive. Remember its users and fans that are the priority, keep them happy and they will keep you happy.
If you want to think about something then think about how many people just stopped using the excess of addons that they may have had with Wowmatrix, I know my move to manual updating due to the whole Curse Premium debacle has seen 30 addons that I enjoy fall off the radar for me because I deemed the effort too much for the benefit. That is 30 addons that I won't think of donating to now and I think in every industry whether it be code or not that "eyeballs = revenue", Firefox is a great example of this as many other examples can be given.
Always remember that at any time person could delete their addons directory and still have a very enjoyable experience.
I'm hoping that the new WoWI updater is a savior in all of this and the modules are well supported and so far it is looking alright, as long as they keep a "premium" version to something of an ad-free state or at least not excessively neutered.