Tweeker, I was hoping that this was resolved the other night in the Carbonite Quest comments section. I'm sorry to see that it wasn't.
Here is a thread from the WoW forums about the Carbonite for-pay version. I highly advise that you read it, as it goes over the points that I tried to make, but in more detail.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...81825791&sid=1
For-pay addons are completely legit. It does not go against Blizzard's EULA or ToS to charge for an addon you create. Blizzard only owns the rights to its game code and any items/characters therein. Authors own the rights to their addon code, and may put it under whatever license they wish.
The only reason why you see so little for-pay addons, is because 1. that requires that the author keep up with updates, fixes, etc, as they have that responsibility by charging users for the addon and 2. because there is so much free stuff around. But anything you find that gets charged for is first-rate. It has to be - otherwise, no one would be willing to pay for it.
Now, about the Carbonite Quest mod hosted here on this site.
Before I made my second post in the Carbonite Quest comments section, I brought your concerns to the rest of the staff. Our consensus was that Carbonite Quest does exactly what it says it does. There is no mention on the download page that it is a few features from the for-pay version, and it is not the old trial, which limited you to 30-days usage.
It is its own mod. You can use it for however long you want to, and never need to pay for the other features. If you *want* the other features that come with the for-pay mod, then you can either pay for it, or substitute other mods for those features. But nowhere are you forced to pay, or asked to pay.
As for your concerns...
If Carbonite Quest was solely an advertisement for the for-pay version, then that would be a different story. But it's not. It is a fully-functional quest database mod that operates on its own.
Authors are free to do whatever they wish with their code. They may license it so that they own all rights to the addon, or release it into the public domain. Or even in-between, where people may make derivative works. An author has every right to charge for their work. See my two reasons above for why you don't see it very often.
There are people on each side of this debate. Some see it as ethical, like you. But that is just your opinion. You create addons for free, but you are not free to force that opinion on others.
This addon does what it says it does, and does not require you to pay for anything. It will be allowed to remain on this site. If anyone wants to download it, they are free to. If they don't, then they won't. I'm sorry to see you go, Tweek.