Making something open source does not make it lose it's copyright status. You can't just rip off someone's javascript and claim they were "handing you the code." You can get away with it for minor stuff, but I'd love to see you try to do that with something like gmail.

While I frequently think RMS takes good philosophy and generates stupid conclusion, I actually think your example proves him right. Imagine MS SQL ships you SQL server with all the source code Query Analyzer and the DB access libraries open sourced and GPL. But they continue to distribute the SQL server engine as closed source and with the current license. Does that make SQL server free or not free?

Your browser example just doesn't work because the browser can access a whole host of other information and isn't built only for talking to that one server. Your other example program could be used to talk to any number of database servers instead of MSSQL. As long as it was a free, open source app and didn't use some incredibly henious MS-specific SQL, you could point it at another DB.

Now imagine something even more symbiotic than Query Analyzer and MSSQL. Something where there really is no practical use for the client except to talk to that server. For AJAX apps, it's more of a parallel to say the Javascript is just the top layer GUI on the behind-the-scenes application. That's what we're talking about here. The client is only half of the application, the server is the other half. An application can't be "half-free."

And I genuinely thank you for the correction.

The only thing I can think of that might be relevant is the non-obsfucation clause. That might sound like it would address this in theory, making it easier to spot buried stuff like this. But to be honest, I doubt anyone would catch it in either case until they saw it happen on their screen and dug through the code for it. And once they reporting it to Blizzard and they found the trigger phrases, they would grep through their chat logs (they do actually keep them) and mass ban all the accounts who have ever said them as well as probably put some kind of trigger on the phrases to auto-ban anyone who says it in the future. Seems like a lot more trouble than it's worth for someone writing the phishing code.

I apologize, I was wrong on the hidden chat message point. Either it wasn't like that when I used to program addons years ago, or (more likely), I'm just remembering wrong. I tried to google around before and check the docs on what you can and can't do, but I couldn't find a cohesive listing. So obviously once you can do that the likeliness of the phishing scenario is much greater.

However, I do stick by my original point that this policy has zero to do with such a case. Such an addon would have already been flagrantly violating even the most basic pre-existing rules. It's silly to think someone creating rogue password stealing addons would be bothered by a few words in a posted policy document.

I think the idea would be to phish for the password by popping up an official looking dialog box that says something like "Please verify your password" with account name and password boxes. Then that a hidden chat message is sent to another toon telling them the information. This is possible (my mistake on not being able to do hidden chat), but probably not effective given some factors I'll post in my response to the OP.

An opinion that seems to have little to do with the facts of this particular change. One of the things they require is that you can't obsfucate your code. That would make it easier for them to copy your code. Secondly, just because you don't charge for something does not mean you lose copyright. There is nothing in this change that says your code is uncopyrightable.

Your opinion might be more plausible if anything they did actually made it less likely that the situation you present could actually happen. If they could get away with saying "your code is not copyrightable", they would likely have already done that.

Wow. This comment probably has to take the cake on the thread for ignorance. Sorry, not trying to offend you, but it's clear you are completely talking out of your ass. If you had known anything about the history of the UI API, you'd know that they severely break backwards compatibility at the drop of a hat. They give some advance warning about it to the developers who monitor the UI forum, but they are merciless.

Read the WoW UI forums. He's already part of the pre-existing discussion there.

From reading comments of these addon authors, it does seem like it's fairly hard to get the 3rd party distribution sites to play ball. They were having a difficult time making it worthwhile via donations already before Blizzard removed their most effective option (a simple in-game mention to donate).

You should read posts by the authors of these popular addons. They can tell you what does and doesn't work. From what I've read, the evidence is that without saying outright "Please donate", you don't wind up getting squat.

I think you clicked reply on the wrong comment. I'm not the author of QH. However, I have read a lot of his replies and he's already addressed your points. Taking your addon off of these sites and such is basically like taking your website out of google's search results. It's a death sentence. This is especially true since only a small percentage of people donate. A small percentage of an even smaller number drives it down to not being sustainable.

Also nUI, which you can see by some posts on the WoW UI board. These are some of the most popular addon in terms of overall downloads. I believe QH may even be the most popular one.

As you say later that you don't play WoW, it's understandable that you don't know how addons work. They have no capability of communicating any stolen information to the outside world other than through in-game chat. This communication would be visible to the user and such an addon would be quickly be blacklisted. As another user pointed out, the only way they could get around this is to have the user download an EXE, and at that point it has nothing to do with Blizzard because that EXE doesn't even need to actually be an addon.

And all of this is moot because these new rules wouldn't apply to anyone who was breaking the rules, anyway. It's like saying you're putting up a stop sign to prevent people from running a red light. Though for the analogy to be complete, you'd also have to not have any such thing as cops or red light cameras.

Not really, if you've been around WoW long enough to know the history. There's a long list of UI changes that Blizzard has made that directly follow popular addons that filled a gap. The addon developers serve as an unpaid (by Blizzard - actually, they pay Blizzard) test lab.

Imagine if they fired a lot of people from that test lab, including the developers of some of the most popular projects. That will definitely have an effect on the quality of the UI.

Actually, after the awful Glider decision, they do have a lot of legal backing. They start out by claiming that they had to use WoW to create their software, thus breaking the ToS, thus not having a legal right to access the WoW server/content, thus breaking copyright by making an illegal copy in RAM. Then they provide their software which violates the ToS, facilitating other users also breaking the ToS, which amounts to each of those users also breaking the copyright. Leaving the original user open for some pretty heinous penalties for mass piracy.

Yes, it's a bullshit argument. Unfortunately, it actually prevailed in court.