I am a firm believer in that we, as humans that have been on this planet for 200k years, are inherently creative but almost nothing we make is 'original'. Everything we make is in some degree a 'stolen idea' or at a minimum an idea with it's origins in another person's creation. In other words, Everything we make stands on the shoulders of those before us.
That said, I recently made a PWYW character sheet available that looked similar to another's persons character sheet. I used his as design as inspiration, I even made that clear when I released my PDF version and suggested that if you like it, you should go support the original designer through the link in my blog post and on the itch page. He did not supply the option for a PDF, so I made one. I hand drew my version, so absolutely nothing was a copy. However, the other person threatened me with lawyering up and frankly, I do not give enough of a shit to deal with it so I simply removed it. I made a total of $13 on the pdf that I spent about three hours making. So, yeah, not worth the headache. Whatever, it is what it is.
I remember when the RPG community used to foster creativity. We built on each other's ideas, freely sharing and creating at a whim, but I guess those days are long gone. Now it is all about money.
