Originally Posted by pelf
For example: (Say) I've found a need to implement a UnitID:GUID map, and so I make a survey of the addons I have installed to find ones that maintain such a map and to see the details of how it is implemented and used in the addon code at large.
As I see it, there are a (practically) finite number of ways to implement and use a UnitID:GUID map under the WoW API and in Lua. What part of an implementation of a UnitID:GUID map would fall under the author's copyright?
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Practically speaking, none of it. Nobody reading your code will bother to wonder whether your wrote a basic utility function like that yourself or copied it from some other addon. Chances are, most of the addons that do the same thing just copied it from someone else anyway. Consider a function to shorten large numbers, eg. "27894534" to "27.8m". I'd wager that 99% of the instances of this function in addons were
not written by the author of the addon in which they appear.
However, once you start talking about more complex systems -- handling user-selectable profiles, for example -- then any given implementation becomes more and more unique, and less and less acceptable to copy/paste without permission.
Basically, if the only way you can make your implementation look different from someone else's implementation is to change how the code is formatted, then you're in the clear to copy/paste. If in doubt, study several implementations to get an overview of how it works, and then write your own without directly copying/pasting or looking at any of the others while you're writing it, or just ask the author if you can copy/paste.
I don't think any addon authors actually care about people copying and pasting utility code like this; we are generally only concerned about copyrights and licenses insofar as they apply to the addon as a whole.
Originally Posted by pelf
So what you're looking to prevent is, explicitly, wholesale duplication via copy/paste? That seems reasonable.
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Personally, I don't even care about wholesale duplication via copy/paste. I just don't want anyone who downloads your duplicate coming to me for help when it breaks. Thus, I wrote my own license that says you can copy/paste 100% of the code if you want, as long as you rename the addon and remove all traces of my name and the addon's original name so nobody can be confused about it.
I also don't want my addon being distributed on s****y third-party sites without my permission, partly because I don't think some third-party leech deserves to make money off my work when they don't do anything for me, and partly because users who would download my addon from such a site are getting screwed out of support, since I would never see anything they posted there.