Originally Posted by Republic
That's incorrect. Blizzard sees Addon work as derivatives of the game itself. Thus, anything making use of any part of the game is legally a derivative unless it contains enough content on its own to be a stand-alone product (something that doesn't rely upon the game). That's the ONLY way any AddOn has a chance to stand on its own copyrightable grounds. It must show itself as a product that does not incorporate any previously published work(s) (like making use of the game, etc.).
In a nutshell, Blizzard is saying AddOn authors exist because of the game. This makes all AddOns derivative works, something which is now expressly prhobited from being a commercial product. Frankly, I agree with the fact that without the game, none of this exists out here. There are no Addons, no AddOn authors. Blizzard wants all revenue from their game as its a commercial product. This is not a new thing for software publishers and it certainly isn't unique to Blizzard or WoW.
I understand both sides of the argument but you cannot blame them for making these policy changes. The guys of Carbonite and similar AddOns simply don't exist without Blizzard. I'm pretty certain Carbonite hasn't been paying royalty fees to Blizzard. Thus, we have this set of very limiting rules. I don't know of an AddOn that exists which can't legally be claimed as a derivative work, regardless of the respective author(s) work(s). AddOns don't exist without WoW. Period. Legally, everything in the community can be seen as a derivative now.
|
Blizzard is a very smart company despite all of the crap people spew about them. As software developers themselves (ya I'm mr captain obvious here), they know the very intricacies about software copyright and licensing.
I posted this some where else, might have been in this thread i forget.
Derivative work is, for example, when you take an original piece of artwork and modify the artwork by drawing a horse on it. The derivative work is now your own artwork and not subject to royalties or copyright of the original artwork, providing there is significant change in the new artwork. In the software world it is similar to what Debian did with Firefox when they took the source code and modified it fixing bugs and making it "Debian" compatible, and released it as their own product (called Iceweasel, based off of Firefox).
Application Addons or plugins that utilize another applications API are NOT derivative work no matter how hard
Richard S. tries to make it (read his arguments on how it should be Linux/GNU and not just Linux and the whole reasoning behind him creating GPL v3). Because they are NOT derivative work and they are NOT straight copies, they are bound to whatever copyright law and license the application author(s)[of the addon/plugin] create.