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I found these rules interesting. They don't really change anything for my work and I don't personally feel the need to conflict with them, but it does raise some questions.
Individual rules that I disagree with:
#2 -- Add-on code must be completely visible.
Two issues with this
"completely visible". How does Blizzard have any legal control over legibility? I can see their goal is to remove DRM-ish stuff, but beyond the lua and xml APIs, it's the original author's work. So if the author writes sloppy buggy code... so? If the author puts in a simple encryption/compression, what exactly has the author done wrong legally? Just because Blizzard says they cannot read your addon -- I see no legal grounds for this.
"Publicly accessible". Not only does it costs servers to host addons for the general public, but I have several personal addons that I don't make public. If I made a personally addon that improved my gameplay over some one else's... that means I'm forced to use my own resources to host an addon for fair play? I have to upload my addon to the internet before I use it? What is the line that Blizzard is looking for?
#3 -- "unnecessary loading from the hard disk, and slow frame rates"
While such things are a goal for authors, forcing Quality Control onto people that you don't pay (Blizzard onto authors) does not make sense to me. And really... EVERY addon will slow frame rates. Addons that preform a lot of work can drop my framerate below a playable level, but that doesn't mean I cannot simply turn it off. I turn off combat parsing addons while doing serious raidings. Addons are not required to play, so why does there need to be a self-monitored, no-pay QC?
This rule is vague and so inclusive of everything that Blizzard could slap this rule against anyone they didn't like.
#6 -- "offensive or objectionable material"
Too subjective, and thus too inclusive. Any addon with an opinion, statement, or belief is also victim to this.
#7 -- ToU and EULA
Addons are not people. Addons don't follow ToU, because they cannot agree to a terms of usage. This needs to be reworded to something along the lines of
"All add-ons must not contribute to the breaking the User's compliance with the World of Warcraft Terms of Use and the World of Warcraft End User License Agreement. "
And in general, how does Blizzard have any legal rights over the copyrighted work that others have produced? Blizzard has supplied a lua and xml engine, and they can control what goes into these engines via their ToU and EULA, but Blizzard doesn't own the lua or xml language.
My biggest issue is that Blizzard has been successful partly due to addons, and has taken works of addons and included into their own code, but when Blizzard's product has grown to a certain size, they decide its time to shed off the third party support that helped make the game popular as if they OWNED / PRODUCED THE RIGHTS TO THE POPULARITY THAT WAS GAINED.
But like I said before, the rules don't really affect me anyways. I just think the rules are overstepping the bounds.
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