neodescis, since it doesn't even have ontop buttons and roll-up buttons, to name but 2, stylesxp cannot and does not skin more controls etc. than Windowblinds.
Please try to base argument and discussion in a founding of reality....

Hi,

I am Binary from the neowin board (hi brad ) As I read through these posts it makes me sick. I have ported the original watercolor skin from whistler build 2419 to msstyles format, does this make me a bad person? No. Because quite frankly there are dozens of watercolor skins for WB. Which I am sure they didnt get permission from MS to do. So now I see new watercolor skins poping up (ugly I might add but oh well ) and parts of them are actually taken straight out of my theme, I can tell because I changed some to my likings, I said to one guy that I dont mind, but it wasnt cool of him to not give any credit to me. So I dont see the point here, If people like your theme so much that they want to port it to another skin format, why not let them? I know I wouldnt care, and it took me over 3 weeks to make my theme. If they give credit then all should be fine imho. Especially since most of the WB skinners are dedicated to WB and wouldnt even consider looking at another format..

This is just my two cents worth, which is actually worth 1 cent since I'm Canadian

Chris

kmkkid, if you don't mind other people "borrowing" from your work, that's your right. By the same token, it is our right to say "no" if we don't want our artwork ripped.

neodecsis - "And by the way, TheHamster - StyleXP actually skins MORE controls than WindowBlinds does. "

Correction, StyleXP does not skin anything. Its not a skinning programming, its a hackers utility. Its Microsofts .mstyles and their Visual Style engine that skins items, not StylesXP.

Just trying to keep the facts straight.

Hi kimkid. I am a bit of a fan of yours from your Watercolor skin.

Watercolor doesn't actually exist publicly so there is no one to object. OS skins are generally considered to be a gray area where the OS vendor will quickly pipe up if there's a problem like Apple sometimes does. But taking from a fellow skinner is not a good thing.

I think some slack should be given to neodescis. Even after all the flaming he has it seems agreed to work on original creations now. A less mature person might have been tempted to do a 'go ahead, make my day' stance and we'd have neverending flame wars on all the related sites which would suck.

I'm an employee of Stardock but i've used StylesXP to hack it so that I can use skins made for MS's format. The skins are pretty crippled in what they can do and I find the new WB beta to be faster anyway.

Thanks Tandis

I know it's sort of different between an OS skin and a program skin such as WB. I just think skinners should open up more, not be soooo hmm whats the word.... protective. Obviously now that there are other options then WB people are going to "rip" skins, it's unavoidable (and sort of a compliment). So they way I see it, if people can improve upon your work, great, but they should at least give credit It's only fair.

Chris

But that decision should rest with the author.

Case in point I mentioned to Brad today, I used to write little freeware apps and released them with source code for OS/2. I would have been very very very upset if somebody had taken my code and ported it to 'windoze' without my permission. Just because I give away the source code doesn't mean I'm giving away the copyright.

I understand completely. It is up to the author. I just wish they would allow people to do it, because there are some great WB skins, and chances are these WB skin authors arnt going to take the time to port their skins to msstyles on their own. I would never rip a WB skin without permission, in fact I was going to email someone and ask permission for a certain skin. But I just might not do it now, since most WB authors will probably say no In fact I dont even know if it would be considered ripping, heres what I was gonna do: I have tried all of the WB watercolor skins, and I really enjoyed this one skin that had about 5 different colour variations. Now I was going to include some of these colour variations in my watercolor theme as substyles, but I figured I should ask first in case it was ripping. I dont think it really is, but it would still be polite
Tell me your opinion

Thanks,
Chris

BTW if anyone can tell me how to get ahold of marcelo garcia please email me @ [email protected]

n/m found it in the uis file

kmkkid...
You seem to have the right attitude with regards to seeking permission for using other people's work.
If the original skinners were approached properly before their work was used, whatever, it is quite possible that they would give permission for others to use/modify/port the skins.
Bad karma is generated, however, when the first anyone knows of a skin's use is its being plastered all over web sites with the 'copier' praising the efforts of the original author, but without the balance of fore-thought to actually seek permission first.

This correct process is called being polite, or having 'common decency'. It is not a difficult thing to do, and will often reap rewards....

Aww c'mon people don't we have to deal with enough crap? Why keep compounding things?Call it "Porting" or whatever you wish but the problem seems to be more than a concern over ripping. First it is possible as you all know that several themes/skins are similar and this is due to the vast amounts of themes/skins available and the fact that with so many people skinnin, it is enevitable that many similarities will occur. Second, if I don't have/use WB but I really like the look of a theme/skin, as long as credit for the inspiration or "Ported from" acknowledgement for the artist's actual work itself is given what's the problem?? Many of you old-timers have been skinnin for years and several of you have "ported" themes/skins from eFX,and others, as well as Enlightenment styles to improve or at the very least take ownership of your machine. There are enough problems why add more?? Hell, I am a newbie to skinnin but I know what I like and if I like a style I'll use it or a variation of it,I mean you gotta start somewhere and if I have to use someone's theme/skin as a base and tailor it to my tastes then that's what I'm going to do. Of course I'll give credit to the original author's great work naturally.

Grymm, haven't the skinners' rights to protect their work been explained throughly enough?

Sorry, but the "why make trouble?" ideology doesn't fly with me. Protecting one's property is not "making trouble."

I do believe in the rights of the skinner to protect their work. I never ment to give the impression of a "why make trouble?" ideology and if that is how it is taken I do apologize for that. What I am getting at is that it's hard enough nowadays to NOT create a skin/theme that bears similarities to others out there without having to worry about being flamed for it.
Now, I know there are some people who intentionally rip stuff and try to pass it off as their own, well, we know the truth.Is it really that hard for people to e-mail an artist to ask for permission?? I have done so in the past and noone has refused. I also give credit via a 3KB text file, to whomever was the originator/artist of what I modify AFTER iI get permission. Hell I've even gone as far as requesting imput from the artist long before I post whatever I've done.
Co-Operation in our community I believe, is so very important.
Its not hard, just look at how long it takes to create some of these fantastic works and how much you've put into them and remember to ask first, and to give credit where its due.

Jafo - I have no idea what "on-top" buttons even are, but it does skin roll-up buttons. It can also skin track ars (sliders), the logoff buttons, and much more (I can come up with more examples if you want).

T-Man - you are right, StyleXP doesn't actually skin XP, but by that token, neither does WindowBlinds. It merely translates the .UIS format into something the XP skinning engine can understand.

neo, there are no roll-ups in msstyles. I've had a year to look at msstyles now. It's a UIS1 type skin format. The only buttons support by msstyles are min,max,close and help. And they didn't execute on much of the code. You can't put buttons on the left even though the format says you're supposed to be able to.

The story for msstyles gets worse though because time is on Windowblinds side. You say how it will skin more apps eventually. Good but right now it don't skin 99% of the apps I run cept for the title bar. WindowBlinds does. By the time theme aware apps show up, WB will do mouse overs on radio buttons and sliders and any other obscure controls.

msstyles is a relic that is embraced by newbies to the skinning world. The only thing it has going for it is that it's bundled with XP and some people like me are willing to crack their systems to give them a try. But they are too limited for most WB users to go to.

neodescis...
As Tandis said, there are no roll-up buttons in a Ms style skin....it is an added function of Windowblinds.
I am not referring to the scroll buttons on a scrollbar.
Also, you might try inserting a clock display in your ms-style skinning, or how about winamp/coolplayer controls?...I'd love to see those being skinned in msstyles.....and not to mention the quick launch menu you can attach to each and every WB skin.
You really need to investigate the capacity of WB's capabilities before attempting to draw comparison.

Oh yes....'On-top' buttons can lock a window to stay visible on top of others, even if focus is moved from that window to another.....often referred to as Z-order.

Bit of research.....great for discussions of fact...

Grymm....just a reminder...
People are entirely at liberty to download ANY skin they wish, and modify it, use it, eat it [if they must], provided they then do NOT re-distribute it to a third party by any means what-so-ever.
That is when the laws of copyright are broken.
To circumvent these laws, all that is required is to contact the original author, requesting permission to re-distribute [upload] this derived work and on receipt of this permission, include a text file to that fact [eg, log of email consent].

The rule is....Permission first, upload second.

I don't have MSWinXP and I do not envision this computer ever having it. The home edition is $90 up from Windows ME and offers little that I can't already do.

Even with that factoid in play...if I had MSWinXP they haven't made a good case why I should sabotage my system DLLs. I find WindowBlinds 2.2, the version currently in use on this particular Windows ME machine, to be plenty fast. Their rantings about WB being slow ring of the hollowness of deceit. Because it's "free"? If you got your copy of MSWinXP free ok. But isnt' WindowBlinds free? You just pay the $20 if you want more features. $20. That is what grinds me. These people who, I conjecture, just paid at least $90 for MSWinXP cannot cough up $20 for something that does 10X as much?

As a mere end-luser, their arguments sound like those who think that I should switch from Adobe Photoshop to MS Paint.

The ripping is just the straw that breaks this camel's back. It becomes representative of a group of people...simply put...I would rather have nothing to do with. I am not empassioned quite enough to create an accout on these..websites...and it does seem to dawn on the people in focus that plagarism is a contemptible thing to do...but I have read the posts and it is doubtless who this..program..hack..patch whatever you deem to call it is being marketed..targeted..aimed at a very particular type of user.

My skins..which are private because they cause milk to sour..are an expression of myself. It would pain me to see someone gut my work. And I skin with Windowblinds because it lets me do anything I want. The choice words, what I want. Not what some "dude" in the cyberworld wants to exploit it for.

Listen to Emily...

Lets not go into religion wars here. It's totally beside the point. Some people like Windowblinds, and some people like Msstyle. But the fact remain: you can't base a skin on another author's skin without his permission, and even more so if permission was explicitly denied. I personnaly never refuse permission to anyone when I'm asked, but i do require to be asked in the first hand.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news...especially in regards to people ripping alexandrie, because I know she's tired of this, but there is a visual style posted at deviantART that appears to contain parts of alex's xp copper skin. http://www.deviantart.com/deviation.php?id=101252

I've posted a thread on devART's rip reporting board and requested and admin to look into it.

it's not partial it's entirely GRRRRR

attila is already looking into it alex

it's gone from devART....nice to see the quick response from some mature and responsible admins (attila & jark).....one rip down...ummm...186 to go