So I went public domain expressly to avoid any of these issues. Also because I don't care after I eventually quit ESO, so I wanted to make my stuff as open as possible. That makes me cool right? Well the people that actually care about their hobby are just as cool and just as entitled to do whatever they want with their code. It is their code after all. If writing a book is copyrightable, then code is as well. It's really the same thing. There's no grey area about it in my opinion.
So here's how copyright works in a nutshell. Anything you put down on paper, or a file, or whatnot is automatically protected by you, for you, against anyone else. Therefore, if a license is not included with an addon it is not "assumed to be MIT license". It is actually assumed to be copyrighted. All rights reserved by author. Etc. You, the evil copying jerk, can't just take it and do what you please with it. There are two cases here: wholesale copying, which seems to be what the thief did here, and derivative works, which is similar in that you start with wholesale copying and make some tweaks (be they large or small). Either way, thief is wrong and original author is right.
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Originally Posted by hNipster
Personally, my position on add-ons as simple as these is to keep 'em open-source, MIT style. I mean, it's a community, put the code out there for everyone to use any way they wish.
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Fine and dandy, you have an opinion. Not everyone shares that opinion. But great for you.
Originally Posted by hNipster
As the person that wrote the mentioned add-on, without a license file or copyright notice of any type in the AI Research Grid add-on, I kind of assumed it was open source/MIT (there's not even an author listed in the manifest). I presumed MIT style licensing since so many of the other add-ons here use that style of license; thus free to do with what you will, since that's what open source is all about (and I would have included that copyright if it were there, but it wasn't so I went with a mention on the page).
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What a mistake that was eh? Assuming somebody does something the way others do because others do it in a specific way. You know what they say about assuming right?
Originally Posted by hNipster
Whether I agree with his viewpoint or not, it was my mistake not to follow up and confirm usage/licensing/what have you, which I apologized to the author for when he contacted me.
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Damn straight. I probably would've sued you to oblivion if it were my code and if this were anything more than addon development.
Originally Posted by hNipster
...and I don't really care to argue copyright on a hobby...
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You have no argument to stand on. So there's no point in arguing your case here. Finally something I agree with you on.
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And now I'm not so cool. Perhaps I'm a jerk, or just really invested in what I do. I may give some things away for free. But not everything.