I still hate thieves, however..
As I wrote in my previous rant, I do hate thieves, but I want to clarify something, the part of this whole thing that irritates me the most. Truth be told if the guy had emailed me and asked how I did ANYTHING on my site I would have gladly helped. I have never once not answered an email asking how or why I did something. I always have provided either step by step instructions, code samples, direction,... whatever the question required. I answer every email that I get from the sites, about the sites, or regarding the sites I build. There's no magic here, there's nothing I have done that can't and hasn't been done 1000's of times over elsewhere. The only thing I'm protective about is the final compilation and arrangement... the presentation.
I will show anyone, anywhere how I did anything if they ask, as long as they don't copy what I have done verbatim, and put their own look to it. In the end that's all we have, the look and feel and interaction. The code means nothing. The visitor doesn't care how we did something, only that it works and is usable.When someone steals another's work and passes it of as their own it dilutes the original work in my opinion. It calls into question "who actually did the work?". Makes things seem less original, less innovative and completely disregards the effort the original creator put into the work. What's worse still is that this thievery (in our industry) is done by our peers (and I do use that term loosely). The people stealing our work are aspiring web designers themselves, and often times competing for the same business. Does it make it any less offensive that someone half way around the world steals my work, versus a guy in my home town? Not really... 80% of my clients are outside of my state and over half are outside of my country.
So for the record, I have no problem with giving anyone any piece of code I have created, or instructions on how to pull off a certain effect or design element. But for Gods sake take that knowledge and apply your own twist, a tad of your own effort, a bit of your own creativity and make it your own work and leave my sh*t alone! Thanks for listening to my rant 
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May 15th, 2006 at 11:23 am
Yeah giving back to the community has made it as strong as it is. Flash is a tool but its only as good as the instructions we as developers and designers feed it. Each person that steals from our community will eventually be weeded out.
To add to your gripe though, something else that irks me is helping someone, step by step, sometimes working their code out for them, communicating through 20 emails and then at the end – no thanks, no nothing. That is until they need more help. That really annoys me. Our time contributed to forums and tutorials and email help is time we are donating. I think folks forget we are not getting paid for that time put into their projects. Anyway, that’s my 2 cents.