I shouldn't see it being a problem, unless they specifically said they don't want the code modified. I always found looking at others code and see how the code came together and did what it did by modifying little parts to see what happens.
Even if the author said they didn't want it modified, you could tell us otherwise and we'd help.
These days, authors that don't want their code modified usually put On SockOpen Events in their code to connect to the IRC server they are known on and tell them you're using their stuff.
