I'm just saying how professional scene works and my point of the view on the matter (which is "don't care").

That is absolutely not how the 'professional' scene works. Where in the world would you get that idea?

Professionals do not steal from other companies and make public rants. Do you see Valve software stealing the content of Doom 3 to be released under their own name? Most mods do not have a problem with content theft because most people are decent enough not to do it. Your clan mate is the exception to the rule; he is an extremely unstable person and is one of the most unprofessional 'developers' I know.

UGH, all this talk of clan wars and rival clans you'd think there going to have a World War!

Honestly Azarael was unprofessional and Stupid for trying to steal Sgt kelly's property, Im sorry if that dosnt Suit what you want but its the truth In BLACK AND BLUE.

If your clan wants to Rage a War with our comunity then look at your members because Azarael's telling you something that Is Biased and WRONG.

Reverse engineering is very common and companies gather every information about products from their concurency. Just look on mobile phone scene for example (all the patent suing). Perhaps I should have used word "business" instead of "professional" as I meant it that way.

Anyway I'm not turning this into a flamewar. So if we don't agree in our opinions we just don't agree in them and don't have to shout it against each other.

I don't want a flame war from this either. But the fact is that Azarael has had nothing but disrespect for the community and BW modders in general, he would not accept anyone else's opinions, despite us being fully supportive of his and other people's mods to achieve balance.

But that post on ModDB? Pretty much the last straw. As far as I know, it was completely out of the blue, after everything finally calmed down, as far as I can tell it was simply trolling on his part.

There's no shouting at the moment, and it's a pleasure to be able to argue with somebody who does not attempt to cut down the opposition by attacking their ideological strawmen and inserting petty insults.

However your reverse engineering point is interesting. As I am working a full time job at the moment, I do not really have the time to fix the netcode and other issues in the mod. This could be a good opportunity to take a break and let someone else do the work.

Man...

Things sure got sad here while I was away...

See, Kabs? You disappear for a few days and look what happens...

You need to post more frequently

Azareal was given a great deal of leeway I assure you, but he went too far time after time, and we couldn't let him openly attack everyone who didn't agree with him that his way was the only way...

And taking the blood sweat and tear of others without permission and then claiming it your own is completely wrong...

There is little room to argue on these matters, copyright law is pretty clear on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Obtaining_copyright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Exclusive_rights_granted_by_copyright



Usually the authors of mods are distributing and permitting the redistribution of their work to be played as is. They are still the owners of the right to exploit the work. The licences of most mods forbid the modification, reuse and certainly the redistribution of the assets in any form other than in their original package.
Most authors, however are reasonable and don't complain about the personal use and modification of their work, but using someone's work and redistributing and exploiting it without permission from the original author is absolutely not permitted, either legally or morally. Most mod authors do allow third parties to use their work WITH PERMISSION and may grant a licence. Giving due credit to the original author is almost always expected.
If anyone wishes to use someone else's work, they MUST ask consent unless the licence explicitly states otherwise.

The fact that this is a mod and not a game does not affect copyright at all. The fact that the product is provided free of charge is irrelevant and does not affect copyright. If no licence is included with the work or no copyright symbols are even displayed, the copyright is still owned by the original author. The only thing that could change it would be if a licence was provided that SPECIFICALLY granted copyrights or some other permission to the licencee. Mods are not usually released under GPL.

If you buy a car, you get the right to drive that car and sell it to someone else when you don't want it no more. You do not have the right to reproduce the vehicle in your physical-matter-o-copier and sell clones or even give them away for free. You'd need to get a licence to do that.

Of course we don't need to read the law to understand that it is wrong to exploit someone else's work for your own gain without compensation and their consent.

Who would like it if they coded a new engine that could handle 1000 times as many polygons and Microsoft or Joe Someguy took it and resold it claiming it was theirs?

Plagiarism is morally and legally wrong.
Copyright laws very greatly depending the country that your from, the US. subscribe to a very larg number of them.
Country (A) has to recognize the laws of country (B)

Oh dear. Typical furry combustability.

Remember kids, there's always an exception to every rule. This is not one of them.

First to say is that the mod / package has to contain a valid copyright (for instance in case of GPL it's in every source code file etc.). This is NOT implicit. In there you can define actual conditions of use etc. If you miss this than the other side will just claim that they didn't know and goodbye.

Same case is BallisticPro extension using your weapon pack just as that case of map on ABA server. Other thing is how community will react to it which usually differs when one steals from another member of the community or from someone outside the community.