grayhaze grayhaze

Here we go again.

Here we go again.

I go away for one weekend, and it starts again. I direct you to the ever lenient NeoWin:

http://www.neowin.net/bboard/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30057

Thanks to those people who let me know about this one.

I won't be making any dumb comments like last time, but I urge you all to have a look at the thread and post your comments.
10,415 views 31 replies
Reply #26 Top
Thanks for the help Brad. Once these people get started, it's difficult to cover all the bases yourself.
Reply #27 Top
moshi: nope, nobody contacted me with any kind of request
Reply #28 Top
I agree the good ports could help WindowBlinds sales. But I'm speaking as your friend and as a fellow skinner. It's been my experience that once someone gives permission to have their stuff ported that it becomes open season on them.

In my view, the msstyle "community" needs to mature first, to have a functioning structure that polices itself. Many people forget that WindowBlinds was originally full of rippers too that just stole bits and pieces from kaleidoscope. But over time, the community formed, evolved and polices itself.

Once the msstyle people (or IF) they can mature and become a bit more sophisticated, then the benefits of porting come into play. Right now, all it does is discourage people from making original skins for msstyles. There's hardly anything original on it as is.

Most of these rippers are unsophicated teens who have no idea how powerless they really are. Without support from the major sites, a skin is not going to be used much and the people in charge of the sites, like most people who actually do real work, have a hefty respect for intellectual property rights.

WindowBlinds users have a real friend in Neobond. He's knowledgeable on intellectual property rights and is very ethical to boot. And if that's not enough, he has a real keen sense of fair play. And he tries his best to run Neowin that way. Neowin just has younger demographics (unsanity is what, 16 years old?) which is pretty common on tech sites.

And let's face it, intellectual property is not something one instantly recognizes as having value. I know I didn't have much respect for it when I was 16.

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Reply #29 Top
I guess 'change from within' will always be better than 'change from without'....
Perhaps it's time that the established WB skinners move over and join the styles kids and lead by example from inside their 'group'...
Reply #30 Top
It's comparable to the problem a lot of Mac icon artists had: no matter how they constantly refused to give permission, their icons were ported to Windows anyway. A lot of them have now decided to port it to Windows themselves in order to insure good quality in the port.
I personnaly think it's a good move.