Originally Posted by Tristanian
I'm sorry but that would never hold water in any court. It is very much possible to create an addon that is totally independent of WoW as a platform and can actually utilize any kind of lua platform. Admittedly, it wouldn't do much on its own but that is immaterial. You don't even have to agree to any EULA and you are totally unaffected by Blizzard's decrees. Hell, even IF you use the WoW API, since you are simply referencing it and not copying it (the code behind the functions, methods etc), you are creating something that it is very much YOUR intellectual property. Likewise, if you aren't (re)distributing or modifying any sort of Blizzard game files, including but not limited to art files, binaries, libraries etc, then I personally cannot see how your addon can be considered as "derivative work".
While I'm not a lawyer, I would be very interested to see someone (Blizzard or anyone else) trying to dispute author copyright of their own work, in regards to addon code.
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I would tend to agree it won't hold water in court. However, if you write an AddOn to perform a function that supports or even uses WoW in any way, I believe that's what they are considering to be a derivative work. For instance, if you write a stand-alone AddOn that let's just say is a bag mod or something. If the bag mod provides a function a user would use while playing/running WoW, irrespective of code or using the interface, the functionality itself is a derivative of the game. Thus, I think even a stand-alone AddOn could be considered a derivative (if you follow their apparent logic anyway). In other words, if your AddOn doesn't do anything if the user isn't running WoW, it's probably not a derivative. If however it provides WoW options or WoW functions, whether or not it uses code or the game itself, it's a "derivative". If that makes sense.
I don't know. I'm sure not trying to think for Blizzard. For the sake of discussion though, I'm just suggesting options. I really don't understand why they'd make these policy changes at this time. Maybe the timing isn't anything important in and of itself, or maybe it's related to events happening in the community (carbonite, etc.). I don't know. It just seems like Blizzard's priorities aren't correct (once again).