Vista hasnt been out for long but we are already seeing a big issue relating to gadgets which is piracy. I have already seen probably 5 examples of people taking someone elses gadget, making a few changes and re-releasing it.
I have been developing widgets/gadgets for Mac OS X and Yahoo Widget Engine for 2 years now and i dont think i can even think of 5 similar cases in that time.
As far as im concerned unless a gadget specifically states that you may modify and re-release it then those people are breaking copyrights. Just because you can view the source of a gadget that does not mean it should be considered open source in a typical sense.
I've released more then 25 widgets/gadgets over the past 2 years and ive never had a problem with copyright issues. I've never bothered to include copyright notices in my code simply because i have had no reason to. But seeing the amount of piracy of sidebar gadgets its really made me think about what i can do to protect my code and images. Im working on 6 or so sidebar gadgets right now and gadget piracy has really made me question if i should even release them. I dont want my hard work to be stolen by someone else.
Im not sure anything can really be done to stop it happening but i would like to see Microsoft take an active stance and make it easy for us to report offending gadgets so they can remove them quickly to minimize damage to the real authors. As far as im concerned gadget piracy is no different to application piracy, music piracy, movie piracy etc....