3 ms·

I wonder if there any copyright issues over the look-and-feel? Windows XP is obviously old and out-of-date, so Microsoft are unlikely to pursue China Standard S

I wonder if there any copyright issues over the look-and-feel? Windows XP is obviously old and out-of-date, so Microsoft are unlikely to pursue China Standard Software over the visual design. I am against the idea that interface ideas (visual design and interaction design) can be patented or copyrighted. However, I'm also against someone slavishly copying someone else's design to the point that it's practically an identical copy. Or do folks consider this to be an acceptable practice? After all, someone can take an open source project and make minor (or major) tweaks to the code and re-release the software. Is such an approach considered acceptable in the case of UI design? Or only if that design is attached to an open source project?

uremog 11y ago
Likely a moot point. Even if MS did anything, China would say, "nah it's just a coincidence" or, "doesn't look similar to me!"
tracker1 11y ago
I'm somewhere in the middle... I would really like to see skinning become more common/popular... I was a pretty big fan of lightstep on Win2k (not ME), as it allowed me to run the UI/UX that I wanted... It was not as easy or seamless as it could have been but was very cool. I can't help but feel that most of the differences between say Unity and Gnome3 should have been a matter of skinning instead of more ingrained as they are... That should include certain filters against notification tools/icons and the dock/taskbar in order to get app icons to appear more inline with the skin/feel. I know we moved away from the likes of litestep and winamp skinning, art and distro groups, but it would be nice to see some of that return.