[leon_]

Probably rather offtopic but: I've never understood the motivation behind "modding". Why put so much work into someone other's project instead of starting something own?

I understand modifying/augmenting open source - because it's a community effort and the result belongs to all of us. But creating modifications for commercial products you will never have any real rights on and then being angry with the owner when he tries to protect his baby/vision - that's just behind my horizon.

[xiaoma]

>Probably rather offtopic but: I've never understood the motivation behind "modding". Why put so much work into someone other's project instead of starting something own?

Why do people spend so much work into learning to sing someone else's song or arrange it instead of just writing their own?

Maybe they like the work despite the fact that it's not their creation. Maybe they don't have the skill to create something from scratch but they can do a great deal standing on the shoulders of others. Maybe they just aren't that concerned with how lawyers divvy up who "owns" what ideas.

It's probably a combination of the above.

[codabrink]

My thoughts on why I would want to mod something very popular is because I would almost immediately have a following if my product is good. Also, I'd be able to create a mod that has functionality that I desire, and I'd get the satisfaction out of using it. And lastly, I don't know if this is always true, but it certainly makes you feel more elite changing the behavior of someone else's code rather than my own. There may be other reasons I haven't mentioned.

[Goronmon]

Probably rather offtopic but: I've never understood the motivation behind "modding". Why put so much work into someone other's project instead of starting something own?

For the same reason people use and license game engines made by other people instead of developing everything from scratch. A large chunk of some difficult work has been done for them.