I don't know why everyone is making a big deal about it, "Open source skins?" NO!

Should have been the answer in the beginning. 

I feel everyone here is doing their darndest to alienate people.

Opinions are like arseholes....everyone has one.

I think there are pretty ordinary skins on our site too....[namely mine].

Open source [creative commons] and GNU was a very big part of the origins of skinning, though primarily with the 'skinnables', not so much the skins.  There would have been no alternate shell movement without 'GNU' - think Litestep.

People who have been around a while might remember what was called 'Community Skins'.  They were essentially what is now referred to as 'creative commons', probably before that was even a 'thing'.

Any of those would essentially qualify as 'for public use/abuse' provided their original rules re credit were followed.

However...

Much of the 'creative commons' ideology is an insidious attempt to undermine actual 'copyright' which DOES AND ALWAYS SHOULD apply to created works by an individual [or group].

Back to specifics....you all should heed Zubaz's comments....more on the button than most...

I have always been ok with someone wanting to "port" my work into one of their own, provided that they ask, and credit.

I can understand a skinner here not being ok with someone taking a WB, change a few things, then share as their own work.  Which seems to be what the OP was getting at.  I could have misinterpreted.

Perhaps a little tact can go a long way but people often respond accordingly to the spirit or what is being said more than the actual words that are typed or spoken.
Sometimes the dos and don'ts of skinning can be confusing, correct me if I am wrong but I always understood that open source applied more to the program, not peoples skins of an open source program. For example, you can take rainmeter and modify it but you cannot take someones rainmeter skin and change a few things and then call it your own creation.

THE END

.....or ?   

The guy had a bad attitude. I don't care about the details of open source in this case because the dude had a chip on his shoulder and that's what bothered me the most. That's what I see and I am done.

or am I?   

Mikali,

Just let it go,you aren't gonna win. I think you got the answer already,there is no open source skins per se.  

I went back over this and I feel that the op might have been misunderstood, I don't believe his intentions was to take someones skin and make subtle changes and reupload it as his own, perhaps a better explanation of intent would have prevented hard feelings.
I am not going to get into the attidude thing but to say that we all can have an attidude at times when we are misunderstood and attacked, at least I can so perhaps I should only speak for myself. Cooler heads need to prefail here and we should allow this thread to be used for learning purposes for any future new member that has the same question as the op. I think we assume that everyone knows or understands the skinning system when infact many don't (not newbies who do not have your experience and knowledge). 

Why? if the thread is kept civil and people can learn something from it then why drop it? I guess that is not up to me though and there are mods here that can decide that.

Example of said Ego right there.

Oh,sorry,my bad,it's the Desktop Screenshot thread I am talking about. Thanks for pointing out.....