5 ms·

What am I missing here?? I thought look and feel wasn't copyrightable. Didn't we learn that in the 80's?

by e40 11y ago

skimmas 11y ago
I'm far from having any real legal knowledge on the matter, but I suppose copying the look and feel is different from looking so much the same that people might miss that they are two different projects. There are probably also some difuse border between look and feel and branding.
deckar01 11y ago
It is a violation of GitHub's ToS. GitBucket is hosted on GitHub.
- justinsb 11y ago
  Which would likely be a violation of anti-trust law, as we learned in the 90s. I hope GitBucket posts the email from Github.
  - biot 11y ago
    Are you suggesting that GitHub is a monopoly and subject to the Sherman Act?
  - dmschulman 11y ago
    Please explain
  - msbarnett 11y ago
    > Which would likely be a violation of anti-trust law, as we learned in the 90s Whatever it is that you think you learned in the 90s that would somehow make that an antitrust violation is quite mistaken.
  - zanny 11y ago
    Github is not a trust, in no sense. The closest part of it is the developer mindshare and hostility to a competitive hosting ecosystem for some incredibly irrational reason a lot of devs have. But even then, gitlab is a direct and successful competitor in the exact same space.
  - mikestew 11y ago
    I mean this in the kindest tone I can muster in a text medium: go read a Wikipedia page on antitrust, or specifically read the details of the 90s MSFT case (which I assume you are referring to) before using the phrase "anti-trust law" in a sentence again. You'll realize why others view your comment as bordering on non-sequitor.
    - justinsb 11y ago
      I would welcome a counterpoint in fact (vs personal statements). To me, the argument would be that Github has a dominant market position in public source code hosting, and using their ToS in this way would limit competition by hindering their distribution, and that this is contrary to the public interest (see "Dear Github" etc). I am by no means a lawyer, and would welcome correction and clarification.
      - mikestew 11y ago
        Not a lot of time at the moment, but I'll start with the fact that there's BitBucket, Unfuddle, and others I've forgotten (hell, SourceForge is still around) that may allow a dominant position in that space, but GitHub is a long way from being a trust or monopoly. Additionally, the barrier to switching to competitor is low. GitHub has arguably little control or influence over the hosted source control market. Unlike Microsoft in the 90s, there is little but goodwill and reputation to keep us all from switching to BitBucket tomorrow. Theres a lot of subtlety I'm missing, but that's the best this non-lawyer can do for the time being.
      - msbarnett 11y ago
        > I would welcome a counterpoint in fact (vs personal statements) It would help, to make a counterpoint, if you spelled out exactly what in the 90s this reminds you of. My wild guess is that this reminds you of the legal agreements Microsoft got in trouble for having computermakers sign that kept BeOS off their computers. But that's wildly inapplicable here. Nevermind the important fact that a TOS for Github's own service forbidding using it to create a competing service is materially different from signing an agreement with a 3rd part to not do business with a competitor, the simple fact is Anti-Trust laws only apply to Trusts. At the time Microsoft got in trouble, they had previously signed a legal agreement acknowledging they were a trust, in 1994. Github hasn't done that. Microsoft signed a legally binding document that said "We acknowledge we are a Trust, and we agree to play by the rules governing Trusts" and then broke those rules. That's what they got in trouble for. None of that applies here, however much you "think Github has a dominant position". That's not enough to get you slapped with antitrust violations. If Github were a monopoly in it's market (which it isn't, but let's pretend), that's not illegal! They would first have to be shown to be leveraging that position to enter into other markets, or to in some other way be illegally using that position to prevent 3rd parties from doing business with competitors, which is a violation of the Sherman Act. Simply saying that competitors can't use their free service is not a violation of the Sherman Act.
joesmo 11y ago
It's not. The CSS is copyrightable, but there's absolutely nothing from stopping another site from copying the design. The Github logo is probably trademarked and a competitor could not use that or any similar trademark, but that's a different issue.
wlesieutre 11y ago
I expect it's eligible for the same protection as any other creative work. You can paint a painting in the same style as another artist, but if you straight up copy every stroke from someone else's painting it's copyright infringement. There has to be a line somewhere between "I own the copyright on the appearance of this painting" and "I own the copyright on the appearance of text documents showing 12pt Times New Roman on a white background" where it no longer qualifies as a copyrightable work, but I wouldn't be surprised if GitHub's page layout fell on the copyrightable side of it. For another example: magazine page layout. If you designed a magazine and a competing publication in the same industry lifted your design pixel-for-pixel, it'd be lawsuit time. If a satirical magazine did it to imitate your publication, they'd be doing it under a fair-use exception for satire. GitBucket is more like the former.
fncypants 11y ago
Two things happening here. First, look and feel may in fact be an artistic expression, which is copyrightable, and cannot be copied under copyright law. More importantly, though is that look and feel may be trade dress, which is a trademark issue, because it helps consumers identify the source of the service. Do you look at Gitbucket's website, which does the same thing at GitHub, and think for a second you're not sure if this is a service that GitHub made? That's trademark infringement. We also learned about trade dress in the 80s. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29wNCH4RBrk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29wNCH4RBrk (Coming to America)
x0ra 11y ago
lots of github fanboys around...

What am I missing here?? I thought look and feel wasn't copyrightable. Didn't we learn that in the 80's?

by e40 11y ago

What am I missing here?? I thought look and feel wasn't copyrightable. Didn't we learn that in the 80's?

I'm far from having any real legal knowledge on the matter, but I suppose copying the look and feel is different from looking so much the same that people might miss that they are two different projects. There are probably also some difuse border between look and feel and branding.

deckar01 11y ago

It is a violation of GitHub's ToS. GitBucket is hosted on GitHub.

justinsb 11y ago
Which would likely be a violation of anti-trust law, as we learned in the 90s. I hope GitBucket posts the email from Github.
- biot 11y ago
  Are you suggesting that GitHub is a monopoly and subject to the Sherman Act?
- dmschulman 11y ago
  Please explain
- msbarnett 11y ago
  > Which would likely be a violation of anti-trust law, as we learned in the 90s Whatever it is that you think you learned in the 90s that would somehow make that an antitrust violation is quite mistaken.
- zanny 11y ago
  Github is not a trust, in no sense. The closest part of it is the developer mindshare and hostility to a competitive hosting ecosystem for some incredibly irrational reason a lot of devs have. But even then, gitlab is a direct and successful competitor in the exact same space.
- mikestew 11y ago
  I mean this in the kindest tone I can muster in a text medium: go read a Wikipedia page on antitrust, or specifically read the details of the 90s MSFT case (which I assume you are referring to) before using the phrase "anti-trust law" in a sentence again. You'll realize why others view your comment as bordering on non-sequitor.
  - justinsb 11y ago
    I would welcome a counterpoint in fact (vs personal statements). To me, the argument would be that Github has a dominant market position in public source code hosting, and using their ToS in this way would limit competition by hindering their distribution, and that this is contrary to the public interest (see "Dear Github" etc). I am by no means a lawyer, and would welcome correction and clarification.
    - mikestew 11y ago
      Not a lot of time at the moment, but I'll start with the fact that there's BitBucket, Unfuddle, and others I've forgotten (hell, SourceForge is still around) that may allow a dominant position in that space, but GitHub is a long way from being a trust or monopoly. Additionally, the barrier to switching to competitor is low. GitHub has arguably little control or influence over the hosted source control market. Unlike Microsoft in the 90s, there is little but goodwill and reputation to keep us all from switching to BitBucket tomorrow. Theres a lot of subtlety I'm missing, but that's the best this non-lawyer can do for the time being.
    - msbarnett 11y ago
      > I would welcome a counterpoint in fact (vs personal statements) It would help, to make a counterpoint, if you spelled out exactly what in the 90s this reminds you of. My wild guess is that this reminds you of the legal agreements Microsoft got in trouble for having computermakers sign that kept BeOS off their computers. But that's wildly inapplicable here. Nevermind the important fact that a TOS for Github's own service forbidding using it to create a competing service is materially different from signing an agreement with a 3rd part to not do business with a competitor, the simple fact is Anti-Trust laws only apply to Trusts. At the time Microsoft got in trouble, they had previously signed a legal agreement acknowledging they were a trust, in 1994. Github hasn't done that. Microsoft signed a legally binding document that said "We acknowledge we are a Trust, and we agree to play by the rules governing Trusts" and then broke those rules. That's what they got in trouble for. None of that applies here, however much you "think Github has a dominant position". That's not enough to get you slapped with antitrust violations. If Github were a monopoly in it's market (which it isn't, but let's pretend), that's not illegal! They would first have to be shown to be leveraging that position to enter into other markets, or to in some other way be illegally using that position to prevent 3rd parties from doing business with competitors, which is a violation of the Sherman Act. Simply saying that competitors can't use their free service is not a violation of the Sherman Act.

joesmo 11y ago

It's not. The CSS is copyrightable, but there's absolutely nothing from stopping another site from copying the design. The Github logo is probably trademarked and a competitor could not use that or any similar trademark, but that's a different issue.

wlesieutre 11y ago

I expect it's eligible for the same protection as any other creative work. You can paint a painting in the same style as another artist, but if you straight up copy every stroke from someone else's painting it's copyright infringement. There has to be a line somewhere between "I own the copyright on the appearance of this painting" and "I own the copyright on the appearance of text documents showing 12pt Times New Roman on a white background" where it no longer qualifies as a copyrightable work, but I wouldn't be surprised if GitHub's page layout fell on the copyrightable side of it. For another example: magazine page layout. If you designed a magazine and a competing publication in the same industry lifted your design pixel-for-pixel, it'd be lawsuit time. If a satirical magazine did it to imitate your publication, they'd be doing it under a fair-use exception for satire. GitBucket is more like the former.

fncypants 11y ago

Two things happening here. First, look and feel may in fact be an artistic expression, which is copyrightable, and cannot be copied under copyright law. More importantly, though is that look and feel may be trade dress, which is a trademark issue, because it helps consumers identify the source of the service. Do you look at Gitbucket's website, which does the same thing at GitHub, and think for a second you're not sure if this is a service that GitHub made? That's trademark infringement. We also learned about trade dress in the 80s. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29wNCH4RBrk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29wNCH4RBrk (Coming to America)

x0ra 11y ago

lots of github fanboys around...