I must first off say that this concept of Charging for skins disturbs me deeply
I understand the motivation, and by all technical what have you, there is nothing to say no.
I will say that I applaud r3ginald for original thinking, and maybe we motivated this a bit, by the coming of reducing the upload sizes to the forum.
His donating to the Haiti thing is strictly his priority, but this will not last, but a good "feel good" measure for the buyer.
For r3ginald: +2 Point(s)
That being said:
My monthly income is less that $300 USD at this time, I can barely aide myself, let alone spend $2 dollars frivolously.
I Donate 100's of hours to Rainmeter and a small handful of other programs a month, I do not build a lot of skins, and none of my ideas are original concept, but I would never have considered depriving anyone the pleasure of Modifying what I have done. For the few skins I have done, they take forever, as many of you know, my typing skill are BAD, and slow...So you can just imagine the time I put in.
I will never ask anyone to ask me permission to mod my skin(s) and I have developed an expectation of the same!
So I will not be investing.
I do not say this to belittle his or anyone else's work to be sure
I almost feel that this concept flies in the face of the Rainmeter Concept and community
I most certainly agree that Morley's statement #2 covers a lot of what I will say, but most of all, that paid for skins are certainly going to get cut off from support here, not so much from any type of prejudice, but because we can not assist with a skin that we have no knowledge of :roll:
In this instance the skin builder is on his own, and no one supporting him, or very selective few.
I fear that this may create for an aristocracy of skins, you want the best , you will pay attitude, but this is personal choice.
The more I think of it, the more that a High and Mighty attitude is going to be developed in all this.
The skin builder must first represent themselves as an absolute authority on Rainmeter and have a skin with a quality higher than Enigma, HUD Vision, or many of JSMorley's works
Rainy can not even claim so much! No one has ever found the limits or the full capabilities of Rainmeter, and Rainmeter is growing everyday!
It would have been nice for the Rainmeter community here at the forums maybe been notified that this was coming :evil:
A bit of respect for those that have helped and assisted to this point
And this bring up the morality question of this action, which has been covered thoroughly :!:
my own emotional response
Ultimately one of three things is going to happen:
1.) Someone will buy it, and start handing out copies, either personally or via a P2P solution
2.) Someone acquires the code, makes the necessary 7% changes and then releases as a new skin, overriding any ability to enforce copyright privilege. Since the skinning language is so common, there would be no way to prove that someone else did not develop independently, so long as there are changes that exceed 7% of the original code.
3.) The concept will die on the husk! The number of folks that will pay for what can be built or modified is low indeed. There are going to be a few, because instant satisfaction is better than work to these folks, but with an ever growing market of free skins, the concept will soon fall by the way-side, and if it doesn't and somehow manages to grow.....I will abandon Rainmeter!
It is unfortunate, I consider r3ginald a valuable member of the Rainmeter community. It is my hope that he will still be a part of this community, but I do not see how we can assist.
Against the concept: -11
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