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I imagine a future with API authentication tokens being used for addon managers moving forward, but probably also on a host's own website when downloading. This would entirely prevent the direct access currently exploited to bypass a host's terms and monetisation schemes. That part is really on the hosts to sort themselves out.
Addon mangers will either conform with the terms set by the hosts, or their access gets revoked. Hosts can live or die by whatever terms they set and the impact that will have on their users and authors, but when providing access to a host through third party software, the developers of that software are obligated to abide by that host's terms. The terms of access are set by each host, not developers of addon mangers, so any good intentions to provide some concessions to hosts are rather moot.
I agree user logins aren't something I'd want to see become mandatory, but optional support for it would be ideal, allowing for premium access where it exists.
I would love to see a future of many addon managers and hosts, where addon managers are selected by users for good UX, and hosts are selected by authors for best offering of services and by users for UX too, but that's not viable if everyone continues in this manner and repeating mistakes of the past. It's a future I envisioned 11 years ago and had to abandon, and the recent situation is why I decided to reach out now to see if my past work could contribute in any way.
P.S. All third-party add-on managers providing downloads from WoWI are currently scraping; the definition includes the use of any APIs to obtain data, not just web crawlers parsing HTML/DOM.
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