Considering how everything I do is either MIT or public domain, no, this has never happened to me.
But for your amusement, here's a story:
For context, Arma 3 is a sandbox game with a very open community, but the Arma 3 Roleplaying community is kind of its own thing with a much more "my code don't steal" sort of mentality.
So I build a custom Altis Life mission with lots of custom scripts to replace stuff I don't like in the original, and most of them I put in a separate public domain repository because why would I not want others to use my code to improve the community as a whole.
A few days later, some server opens with what turned out to just be a somewhat similar feature to what I had scripted for my custom mission, and people that notice it start sending me messages that "dude they stole your script". My reaction was, of course, "so what?" but nope, it didn't go into their heads that (back then still assuming this was the exact same script I had written) those weren't "my" scripts, and that I've basically just given it away for free because why wouldn't I.
The funny part is, over the years I've noticed that many of these communities centered around a certain game or gamemode with a strong "my code don't steal" culture tend to also be filled with low-quality code. It seems a bit of a dunning-kruger effect, where the worst of coders somehow see the most value in their code, whereas more experienced developers just throw out scripts and don't even care to protect their IP.
Conclusion: Unlicense your code, y'all!
PS: Abolish IP
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Considering how everything I do is either MIT or public domain, no, this has never happened to me.
But for your amusement, here's a story:
For context, Arma 3 is a sandbox game with a very open community, but the Arma 3 Roleplaying community is kind of its own thing with a much more "my code don't steal" sort of mentality.
So I build a custom Altis Life mission with lots of custom scripts to replace stuff I don't like in the original, and most of them I put in a separate public domain repository because why would I not want others to use my code to improve the community as a whole.
A few days later, some server opens with what turned out to just be a somewhat similar feature to what I had scripted for my custom mission, and people that notice it start sending me messages that "dude they stole your script". My reaction was, of course, "so what?" but nope, it didn't go into their heads that (back then still assuming this was the exact same script I had written) those weren't "my" scripts, and that I've basically just given it away for free because why wouldn't I.
The funny part is, over the years I've noticed that many of these communities centered around a certain game or gamemode with a strong "my code don't steal" culture tend to also be filled with low-quality code. It seems a bit of a dunning-kruger effect, where the worst of coders somehow see the most value in their code, whereas more experienced developers just throw out scripts and don't even care to protect their IP.
Conclusion: Unlicense your code, y'all!
PS: Abolish IP