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Actually, I see what Traithe is doing as worse than what Vryce is doing in one way and not as bad in another way. Overall I'm quite happy to label them both thieves.
Vyrce is worse because of his blatant and continuing disregard even though the DIKU authors have supposedly stated they wish him not to continue violating their IP's license. On the other hand, while it's extremely grating to see Medievia getting away with it, it's not hurting the license holders in any way so it's rather debatable how much harm to them he's causing (whether or not he's causing other people not to release codebases is a bit irrelevant to me as the only people who can be harmed in any way I care about by an IP violation is the IP holder.)
Traithe is worse because he CAN cause real harm. Whereas the DIKU people use the DIKU IP for no gain of their own and thus cannot suffer loss, the Tolkien people clearly use their IP for gain and thus can suffer real loss by Traithe's actions. I'm not interested in spurious arguments about how you fan fiction helps the author as that's not your determination to make. If the IP holder wanted help, he'd let you know.
So, I see it in two ways and in the balance I see Traithe's actions as worse than Vryce's, albeit with better intentions, so I'm willing to simply equate the two as thieves.
--matt
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