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.
Open source, steal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Without stealing of ideas, we wouldn't have Open Office which implemented feature-for-feature what Microsoft Office has. Without stealing, we wouldn't have KDE and Gnome with implemented many features from Windows and OS X. How could open source survive without it? :)
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:5, Insightful)
How could open source survive without it? :)
Coming up with your own ideas instead of cloning everyone else's?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:4, Insightful)
How could open source survive without it? :)
Coming up with your own ideas instead of cloning everyone else's?
That depends on what your open source project is. If you want to replace a current application with an open source one, coming up with your own ideas of how to implement it won't be the best option. If I wanted my company to replace their versions of Microsoft Word with an open source word processor, I would want the application to reliably and hopefully in a simple way do all that Microsoft Word currently does. There is no point in making a word processor if it's so different and can do all these other things if it can't do the things I need it to do.
Coming up with ideas has nothing to do with open/prop source.
When making something new, to look into a market/niche that isn't being catered for currently, come up with new ideas, do things that no-one has done already. Be creative. When trying to take a market from someone else or to replace a product, copy the functionality features - but even at that point, it would be better to look at how those functions and features might be improved in the process. Giving someone a product that does exactly the same thing won't give them any incentive at all to change. Giving them a product that does the same things, but better/simpler/easier/quicker is when you will have a product worth swapping to.
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's impossible. You can't live in a vacuum, and EVERYTHING is derivative to one degree or another.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a difference between being derivative and being an attempt at a 1:1 copy.
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: (Score:2)
I disagree.
Cheers,
--fooatwfu
Re:Open source, steal badly (Score:2)
Thr's a diffrnce btwn bing drivative and bing an attmpt at a 1:1 copy.
I disagr.
Chrs,
--^x
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a difference between being derivative and being an attempt at a 1:1 copy.
The problem with this is the metalab seem to be implying Mozilla ripped them off, they actually have no idea who it was (based on RTFA, not doing any additional research).
It seems that Metalab submitted a design for this project, but it is not the design that mozilla used. Mozilla went with a different design that was ripped off from Metalabs homepage. That might just mean someone else saw the same invite to tender that Metalab did and searched various design company websites until they found something half
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Thats impossible, even for a computer.
Re: (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: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why would the womp rats be stationary? You're just beating a dead womp rat.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (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: (Score:2)
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why reinvent the wheel? If there's a particular design/UI element that's in use, has been updated and refined for decades, and is generally accepted as the easiest or most efficient, or even just the most familiar way to do things, why reinvent it? If you eschew it completely, you're likely to alienate a significant portion of your user base.
Re: (Score:2)
If certain interfaces didn't mock/copy/clone others, they would be constantly criticized by troll for being different.
Re: (Score:2)
How is that working for Microsoft, Apple and all of the Unix vendors exactly?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Without stealing, we wouldn't have many works of Shakespeare or Bach, both of whom copied liberally from their Italian counterparts. (Of course that was before copyright existed, hence plagiarism of ideas was not only legal, but accepted.)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
If we lump patents with copyrights, that was also the time when people who invented great stuff tended to die in poverty after the entire western world "stole their imaginary property" (a.k.a. "was inspired by their ideas"):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Crompton
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
*blinks* Um, Ayn Rand wasn't a particular fan of either copyright or patents.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You really should be careful with that paintbrush.
I'm a conservative.
And a Republican.
I HATE corporations - I consider them to be the second worst evil in this nation (gov't being first). Concentration of power in a few, and the laws to protect them, is a dangerous doctrine.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
However, your remark about composers borrowing from each other is correct. Vivaldi borrowed extensively from Ruggieri and Corelli.
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. The worst part was how the KDE team went FORWARD in time, completely ripped off Windows 7 and then went BACK in time and implemented KDE4 before Windows 7 was even in beta! The nerve!
(Anonymous for obvious reasons)
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:5, Funny)
(Anonymous for obvious reasons)
Yeah, defending KDE on Slashdot is very risky.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, defending KDE on Slashdot is very risky.
Well you do have to watch out for gromes... I hear they have sharp pointy teeth and a horrible child-like voice that is very unnerving and rather unexpected giving their demonic nature...
Re: (Score:2)
In Windows: KDawson Edition, there's no spellchecker and Internet Explorer 5's home page is automatically and irrevocably set to Fark.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
There's been an open source Flux Capacitor for years!
Except it only runs under Gentoo, and they haven't finished compiling it yet.
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What's similar about KDE4 and 7? All the new features in the latter, compared to Vista, don't have any direct analogs in KDE (so far as I know).
KDE vs Vista would be a more interesting comparison... but I still strongly suspect that the whole "ooh shiny" angle was picked from OS X rather than KDE. But if you can show otherwise, by demonstrating a feature unique to KDE that was copied, by all means, go ahead!
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:5, Interesting)
You just need to search Slashdot, when the first screenshots of Windows 7 came out, many compared it to KDE4. Now everyone compares Seven to KDE4...which is unfair, as history shows otherwise. I doubt Aaron Seigo and related folks had inside views of Seven's development.
But as the parent implies, it seems defending KDE4 is a risky position here, I wonder why. Qt is free now, and KDE is as much of a windows clone as most window managers out there, with a taskbar and titlebars. Gnome is a windows clone too.
Re: (Score:2)
So, It turns out that both dev teams went forwards in time and stole features from the other.
Now, what I'd like to know is why they can't get the patches while they're at it, so they have bug-free products.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Without stealing of ideas, we wouldn't have Open Office which implemented feature-for-feature what Microsoft Office has. Without stealing, we wouldn't have KDE and Gnome with implemented many features from Windows and OS X. How could open source survive without it? :)
Microsoft Word is the standard in word processing, it was reasonable to get a half functional free equivalent for users who couldn't run MSWord, but mozilla is huge and quite capabable of creating their own designs, while the firm they stole from is much smaller and not a standard in any way.
Re: (Score:1)
Your examples aren't the same as what happened here. It's not that MetaLab's product influenced the design elements in Mozzila's Jetpack, It's the fact that the gui elements are exactly the same. None of your examples are exactly the same and some of them have even gone back the other direction with open source software inspiring closed source software. Too be fair to Mozzila though, it was just a mock-up which is aimed at getting the point across.
Under 30, are you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Under 30, are you? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess you forgot Harvard Graphics :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Excuse me while I go rinse my brain with bleach, and start my mental conditioning over.
Re: (Score:2)
Lotus 123, Visicalc, WordPerfect, ... I guess you can give MS PowerPoint.
Also Access from dBase. It is interesting that you include both Lotus 123 and Visicalc. It just goes to show that borrowing ideas has gone on since year dot. Even Visicalc was just a pretty interface to existing spreadsheet programs.
Just imagine how crap software would be these days if they had software patents back then. We would still be having to run our spreadsheet in non-interactive batch mode.
That's why I have no problems at all with incorporating ideas from proprietary software into open source proje
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> My only beef is when people get all high and mighty about ideas being borrowed in the
> other direction. Who cares if Microsoft or Apple take ideas that started in the open
> source world. The end result is an improved user experience for all software.
No one cares about what Microsoft or Apple copies about until they make noises about "freedom to innovate" or start patent trolling.
They get flack for lying and hypocrisy, not theft.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Without stealing of ideas, we wouldn't have Open Office which implemented feature-for-feature what Microsoft Office has. Without stealing, we wouldn't have KDE and Gnome with implemented many features from Windows and OS X. How could open source survive without it? :)
Feeling trolly today?
Both Apple and Microsoft copied from Xerox, Lotus etc.
The difference is that, when a FOSS copies from something else, it does not have the chutzpah to claim originality.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's because we sent the OSS marketers along with the telephone sanitizers on the B-ark.
Re: (Score:2)
Feeling trolly today?
A little. Hopefully the smiley tempered it.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you read what they're accused of stealing? They're accused of stealing website design.
Here's a photo demonstrating exactly what they're accused of stealing [amazonaws.com]
While I'd admit they look very similar (FlightDeck looks better IMHO) this is the internet, every well designed site ends up on other sites. How many websites look like Amazon? Look at all the identical looking blogs created with wordpress. Honestly MetaLab I think you're mad they took your design and improved upon
Re: (Score:2)
The difference is that, when a FOSS copies from something else, it does not have the chutzpah to claim originality.
I must have been delusional when I thought I read all those posts on Slashdot Games saying that Frozen Bubble and Battle for Wesnoth were original...
Re: (Score:2)
The difference is that, when a FOSS copies from something else, it does not have the chutzpah to claim originality.
I must have been delusional when I thought I read all those posts on Slashdot Games saying that Frozen Bubble and Battle for Wesnoth were original...
Dunno, it's possible someone wrote that. Still, I cannot find any originality claim in either projects' websites.
Personally, I could never understand the fanboyism behind Frozen Bubble. It looks like a (polished) 1980s game.
Re:Open source, steal? (Score:4, Insightful)
The same old tired excuse -- did you even look at the article and linked blog entry? This isn't about stealing of ideas, this is stealing work pixel-for-pixel. That's never OK, and has nothing to do with open source or "artistic inspiration".
Re: (Score:2)
The same old tired excuse -- did you even look at the article and linked blog entry?
Um... this is Slashdot, right?
Re: (Score:2)
I have two questions. How does one "steal" pixels and why is it not ok? If elements of their UI look good, I say use them. There is NO WAY that it harms the original application, and I'm pretty sure that you can't copyright a piece of a UI.
Re: (Score:2)
Application 1 pays a staff of graphic designers and UI designers to create images and a well thought out design. That cost must be included in the price of the product in order to make profit. Application two grabs finished images straight out off of the other companies website and slaps them into their product with no effort or cost. Application 2 is now benefiting off the work of Application 1's staff. Application 1 doesn't look any better for the extra money spent on it, and has a higher cost.
Besides
Re: (Score:2)
Without stealing, we'd each have to independently invent the wheel and discover fire.
WRONG!.. people are small perl scripts. (Score:2)
Most people don't understand how stuff work. Just learn where is a icon, and learn to press it, and press again on other icon with other name... don't learn to use stuff, learn to run these "small scripts". If you moves that icon, you break his "script", if you changes the icon too much, or removes it, the user become lost.
So to have user work with your stuff ( a Office tools program, or a Desktop ) you have to completelly copy what the users have learn. This is some menus and icons in a Office program
Snore (Score:5, Insightful)
Company does something wrong.
Company apologizes.
Accuser accepts apology.
Slow news day?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I see lots of "Oh great, another dumbass post from $EDITOR".
Are there any editors than anyone here likes or thinks is remotely competent whatsoever?
Re: (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 Microsof
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair... Slashdot was, for a while, free of most people who would associate with Apple or Microsoft. It seems to be a more recent trend.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Your haiku does no scan. How about
As the title says, it was only a mockup (Score:5, Informative)
The summary alludes to this, but just in case (since 90% of people who comment probably won't read past the headline):
Re:As the title says, it was only a mockup (Score:5, Informative)
Note that the headline says just that:
MetaLab Accuses Mozilla of Ripping Off UI Elements in Mockups (emphasis mine)
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: (Score:2)
This was a mockup people (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This was a mockup people (Score:5, Insightful)
So, a company decided to take shortcuts in creating a mockup
No, they showed it to the public. Public demo trumps mockup, and they deserve a bit of flak for this one.
Re: (Score:2)
meh, copyright can fuck right off.. How would you even show damage in a case like this? Stupidity.
Re: (Score:2)
a world without any copyright/patent law is a sad, sad world. kinda like a world where stealing or murder are legal.
Re: (Score:2)
the only thing worse than a mistake is over-correcting for it.
OK.
a world without any copyright/patent law is a sad, sad world. kinda like a world where stealing or murder are legal.
Although from this I guess over-correcting analogies is perfectly fine.
Re:This was a mockup people (Score:4, Informative)
Well, Mozilla reject their bid proposal, where Metalabs could've earned $XXX for their labor, but went ahead and used their design for their own purposes, regardless if it's just a mockup. It's like if you told potential investors or your great new gadget, and in good faith did not make them sign a NDA (those are so pretentious unless you're *both* very big companies), rejected your idea, but went ahead and placed an RFP, or beta test, or whatever using your idea as a skeleton.
Even something small as a bid proposal takes time and money to put together: from programmers, to art & design guys, to marketing, and sales.
Good thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good thing. (Score:5, Informative)
1) Extensions created with Jetpack (the actual framework, not the prototype based on ideas from Ubiquity) have to a large extent the same powers as an old-style extension. There is a certain number of capabilities provided, but if you need more, you can write your own capabilities, share them, or indeed use others users shared capabilities.
2) As an official Jetpack Ambassador, and Ubiquity core developer (as previously mentioned, the base of some of the ideas for Jetpack), I can honestly say that I have never heard talks about ditching regular extensions, except from user-comments on sites like Slashdot. Indeed, many of us involved with the project have addressed this issue on several occasions.
3) The idea was never for "normal people" to make extensions, it was to widen the audience from a very few XUL developers (I believe the number is in the low end of 4-5000), to web-developers in general.
There are several interesting possibilities with this, amongst them companies using existing web developers in their employment to create work-flow enhancing extensions quickly, and letting website developers create new ways of interacting with their site. Especially in the latter case, the extensive security model in Jetpack compared with old-style extensions, and the ease of install/uninstall is paramount.
Best regards,
-- cers / Christian Sonne
Changed (Score:4, Informative)
UIs need to be borrowed from (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing ripped off, taken, stolen, or missing (Score:3)
Who cares if it was a mockup? (Score:2)
What does it matter if it was a mockup or the real thing? Last I checked using "UI elements" was not protected by copyright or patents. This is the same as the Microsoft and Apple "Look-and-feel" lawsuit from last century. The original complaint was about mockups using straight copied images which could be a copyright infraction but the final product even if it looked nearly identical would be non-infringing. KDE and GNOME both have UI themes that completely rip off various versions of Windows and MacOS. Th
Re: (Score:2)
KDE4 ripped off 7 before they even saw it then?
Did they use a kTimemachine?
reverse the situation (Score:4, Insightful)
yes thats right, slashdot is as bad as fox news.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
stop and think of the comments if the situation was reversed.
yes thats right, slashdot is as bad as fox news.
More like people are just people. Our experiences give us bias, and there is nobody who can achieve perfect objectivity in every situation. People here have a propensity to cheer for open source software. Through their own experiences, Fox viewers have a different perspective. It's not bad, it's just life. The alternative would be to throw out all emotion and become as the Vulcans. Yes, we're all biased. Yes, we're all emotional. Yes, we're all hypocrites--especially those of us who pretend to have
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The logo of firefox is protected (either by copyright or trademark, cant remember which).
It is why Debian include "IceWeasel" now instead of firefox. Due to anal licensing requirements. (not saying it is a bad thing, just not for me :-p)
Front page stuff: decent behaviour (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Slashvertisement much? (Score:2, Interesting)
I hadn't heard of MetaLab before. Now, I have.
Mission accomplished.
Wow. Everyone involved behaved like adults.... (Score:2)
!Stealing (Score:2)
Re:Hm.. its a mockup (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
They did (privately) report it to Mozilla first. The blog went up after Mozilla ignored them.
Citation needed.
Gerv
Re: (Score:2)
Er, you can't cite your own comment in support of your comment. You need to provide a citation from Metalab that says they did report it privately first, and (preferably) a citation from Mozilla agreeing that this happened.
My understanding is that Metalab blogged without contacting Mozilla first.
Gerv