Breaking Extensions so much

[Nylanfs]

edit: But yes, I should be more careful to not imply everyone is in the same group, regardless of the topic.

Except those people who like pineapple on pizza, we are always awesome.

I've always found that the average person doesn't have a firm grasp on copyright, IP law, and licensing. Granted I am a bit biased having handled PCGen's PR and licensing for about 16ish years.

[Mike Serfass]

FYI, Abandoned extensions can not just be given to some other developer to take over. SmiteWorks has to follow Intellectual Property laws. And most community devs do not specify a license for their extensions. Therefore, the law says they retain all rights to the code. Therefore it would be illegal for someone to take over the code.

I've tried before to get the community devs to just post their licenses. With the hope that many could/would use something like one of the MIT or CC licenses that would allow collaboration. But I got zero takers. And to my knowledge, Rob2E is the only one who planned the handoff of his work. Simple put, most community devs don't care enough about what happens when/if they leave the community to spend any time or effort accommodating it.

Like SilentRuin, I add licenses to my extensions, and I distribute them unencrypted and invite others to look at my code.
I added licenses after I read your referenced post about licenses. I hadn't thought about that previously, as I'm sure most devs don't, and probably people who aren't devs by trade have no idea how IP works. So thanks for that post.
I use the GNU GPL, which will let someone take over if I vaporize.
If I ever plan on leaving FG, I will look for someone to take over. And I'd contact SmiteWorks to tell them they're free to transition my extensions to someone else.
Not everyone does that, unfortunately. I've looked at various extension code bases, and I rarely see a license.

Maybe we could have a forum where extension devs could post their desire for the fate of their extensions if they become orphaned.
Maybe SmiteWorks could have an extension developer agreement that covers this. And require some kind of license be attached to extensions to cover orphans.
We could come up with something to help prevent extension limbo.