Consider this scenario: a engineer is working on a project and finds another engineer has worked on something similar but has a better solution. This other engineer shared his solution on his blog. The code is open-sourced. The engineer grabs that code, and uses it. This is a fairly common, and not really falling under any scrutiny, as far as I am aware.
Now, a designer is working on a project and finds another designer has worked on something similar but has a better solution. This other designer shared his solution on his blog. The designer grabs the design and uses it.
Whereas for the engineer, this is common practice, for the designer it is not as reputable. If the designer were to share his work and let it be known that it is from someone else, his talent would diminish. My question is: do engineers ever feel similarly about this? I for one feel less authentic and less skilled if I use a template file. Even if I remake that template from scratch following the same steps I feel more satisfied: much like a musician playing Mozart or a chef using an established recipe: even when the steps are copied, variation and innovation seem to occur. When something is copied wholesale — even with tacit encouragement from the creator — the mutation of creativity does not seem to occur.