MetaLab Accuses Mozilla of Ripping Off UI Elements In Mockups 159
CWmike writes "Canadian interface design firm MetaLab has accused Mozilla of stealing user interface elements for a development tool in the browser maker's Jetpack project, which aims to simplify add-on making. MetaLab leveled the charges on Tuesday when the 11-person firm's founder, Andrew Wilkinson, blogged about the similarities between his company's designs and those posted by Mozilla for FlightDeck, a Jetpack editor. 'What they did was pretty ridiculous,' Wilkinson said on Thursday. 'There's a difference between inspiration versus ripping something off,' he said. 'The measurements of the graphic elements [Mozilla took from us] were the exact same, the very same pixels. When someone takes your images from the server hosting them, that's crossing the line.' Mozilla apologized to MetaLab on Wednesday, saying in a blog post, 'While the design direction being implemented does not utilize these design elements, we inadvertently included the early mockups in our blog post and video announcing the next phase of development for the Jetpack SDK ... We sincerely apologize to MetaLab for incorporating design elements from their web site in our early mockups and for posting them publicly without proper attribution.'" Alexander Limi of the Firefox User Experience Team points out that MetaLab has accepted the apology, too — worth bearing in mind.
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:5, Funny)
(Anonymous for obvious reasons)
Yeah, defending KDE on Slashdot is very risky.
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:As the title says, it was only a mockup (Score:5, Funny)
ARTHUR: Camelot!
GALAHAD: Camelot!
LAUNCELOT: Camelot!
PATSY: It's only a model.
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:3, Funny)
That's because we sent the OSS marketers along with the telephone sanitizers on the B-ark.
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:3, Funny)
Thats impossible, even for a computer.
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:3, Funny)
Coming up with your own ideas instead of cloning everyone else's?
Xerox called and offered you a job to speak out against Microsoft and Apple for stealing all their really good ideas. I told them you thought that stealing their money for something you do for free would be stealing... They said they fully understood and also welcomed me to something called the 'Tautology club'.... I'm not sure if I'm sure about what that word really means...
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:5, Funny)
There's a difference between being derivative and being an attempt at a 1:1 copy.
I disagree.
Cheers,
--e^x
Re:Snore (Score:3, Funny)
Slow news day?
The days are getting so slow around here that they have had to resort to traveling into the distant past to find stories to post.
But yeah everyone keeps saying 1:1 copy - the horror! I bet most of these same people are guilty of doing this with their own program GUI's or websites. Honestly we all know that the 'make it shiny' peoples aren't always the 'make it stable' peoples so this really just isn't a big deal. It's a damn mock up plus the underlining code is totally different. It's not like when Microsoft xor Apple cuts and pastes GNU code into their apps or heck release entire programs they stole from GNU code.
Wait... this is /. so never-mind most of you are working for M$ or Apple while stealing GNU code and masturbating to loli porn about a despotic corporate future state where you can exact your revenge on the children of those who bullied you at the bus stop as a child. You sick twisted aspe fucks totally disgust me..
Or I guess you could just be Opera uses as the effect would be equivalent.
Regardless we will soon find out how true this statement is as I expect a -1 troll or flamebait mod just as soon as you finish cleaning yourselves up. twats...
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:3, Funny)
Thats impossible, even for a computer.
It's not impossible. I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, they're not much bigger than two meters.
Re:Snore (Score:3, Funny)
Your haiku does no scan. How about