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Having a hard time finding anything on the site that explains how it's different from Total Commander though, other than price. If it's just "Total Commander, b

Having a hard time finding anything on the site that explains how it's different from Total Commander though, other than price. If it's just "Total Commander, but free", including TC plugin support, I'd be rather surprised if that's even legal? Because if it looks and acts effectively the same as a paid application, except yours is free, then there is very concrete and intentional monetary damage being done.

npteljes 4y ago
It runs on Linux natively, for one. And also the settings are reorganized.
arpa 4y ago
You must really love software patents!
- ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
  No it's not about patents and legalese. It's about human(e) attitude. Christian Ghisler has been developing Total Commander for 27 years, since 1995. While he didn't invent the idea of two-pane file manager and more or less reimplemented Norton Commander in proper graphics-mode GUI, he added so much more to it over those three decades that it wouldn't be right to call it a copy of NC; moreover, he didn't ship it for free, he priced it at the same $49. What the author of Copy, sorry, Double Commander does is pure and simple dumping. It's like standing next to a bakery and giving away same cakes for free. Does that feel right? I wonder how the development of Double Commander is backed financially.
  - unixhero 4y ago
    It is open source, free as in libre, EDIT and as in beer.
    - ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
      From https://doublecmd.github.io https://doublecmd.github.io >Double Commander is absolutely free <,comma> open source software. Implies free as in beer as well, unless someone rubs my nose into the price stated somewhere on the website.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Do you have the same attitude towards, say, FreeCiv?
    - ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
      Not into games, but have the same sentiment towards Microsoft (with VSCode) and other companies and communities which give away software that all but clones commercial analogs while drawing profits off something else, effectively squeezing those who sell software for a living out of business.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  I hate them with a passion: do not mistake a question based on how the world seems to work for being happy with how the world works. If I use this, and it gets litigated out of existence, I'm right back to "okay so NOW what do I use?".
aidenn0 4y ago
Competition is not "monetary damages." There are oodles of orthodox file managers[1], and several of them are named "Commander" so it's not like there is a trademark case here. Compatibility with competitors software is also quite well established as being legal. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_manager#Orthodox_file_managers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_manager#Orthodox_file_man...
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  So that's already a fundamental misunderstanding of how the law works, whether we like it or not (and make no mistake: I don't), competition involves making your own thing with its own look and feel, that fills the same market need. This is not that: this is a clone of the Total command look and feel, in addition to its functionality. So as someone who pays for some software, and doesn't pay for other software because it's free: how is this, from a US and EU legal perspective, legal rather than preventing a company from earning revenue by offering a near-identical clone for free? If you sell your own brand of cornflakes, with a distinct box, even if you contract the exact same third party cornflake producing plant (i.e. exactly what happens in the laundry detergent industry), that's competition. If you make your cornflakes available for free, and you use basically the same packaging as Kellogg's to the point where if you showed both to someone unfamiliar with the exact styling queues they'd go "... aren't these the same?" that's laws being broken. And from the screenshots, this sure does look identical to Total Commander. So again: is this actually legal? (it might be, I don't know, which is why I asked)
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Of course it is legal. If you have some know-how that you want to protect, that's what patents are for. If you have some unique recognizable design that you want to protect, that's design patents and trademarks. But the two-panel file management paradigm predates Total Commander by many years - TC itself copied NC - so I doubt they would be able to patent anything worthwhile even if they tried.
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    Okay there are a few things going on here: 1. A substantially similar product I think we both agree this is legal (given your laundry detergent example) 2. Confusion for the original product in marketing materials (including packaging) - This relates primarily to trademarks law; I partially addressed this in my original comment pointing out that simply the name being of the form "X Commander" isn't likely an enforceable trademark. - The DC homepage has a screenshot, then some text, which includes the text "it is inspired by Total Commander." This seems analogous to a picture of cornflakes followed by "compare to Kellogg's Cornflakes" 3. The UI looking an awful lot like TC If the icons TC used were copyrighted, and DC used them, that's clear copyright infringement, but I don't think this is being alleged here. This gets complicated quickly; the general layout (status bar at top, clickable reminders of keyboard shortcuts at bottom, two side-by-side panes, &c) did not originate with TC, so if DC is in trouble for this, it's not with TC The great similarity in the general look is at least partly to them both using Lazarus, and partly intentional to make it easier to use by existing TC users. The similarities just from using the same toolkit are generally fine. I think the point you are raising that when combined with the intentional layout similarities this could rise to the level of product confusion; if the buttons all looked very different, but were in the same screen positions and did the exact same things, then DC would look very different from TC. As far as copying the "look and feel" Lotus v. Borland strongly suggests that the interface of an application is not subject to copyright. If TC had a design patent or trademark on the menu or toolbar look, then they could almost certainly enforce this, but it would have had to have been registered in advance.

npteljes 4y ago

It runs on Linux natively, for one. And also the settings are reorganized.

arpa 4y ago

You must really love software patents!

ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
No it's not about patents and legalese. It's about human(e) attitude. Christian Ghisler has been developing Total Commander for 27 years, since 1995. While he didn't invent the idea of two-pane file manager and more or less reimplemented Norton Commander in proper graphics-mode GUI, he added so much more to it over those three decades that it wouldn't be right to call it a copy of NC; moreover, he didn't ship it for free, he priced it at the same $49. What the author of Copy, sorry, Double Commander does is pure and simple dumping. It's like standing next to a bakery and giving away same cakes for free. Does that feel right? I wonder how the development of Double Commander is backed financially.
- unixhero 4y ago
  It is open source, free as in libre, EDIT and as in beer.
  - ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
    From https://doublecmd.github.io https://doublecmd.github.io >Double Commander is absolutely free <,comma> open source software. Implies free as in beer as well, unless someone rubs my nose into the price stated somewhere on the website.
- int_19h 4y ago
  Do you have the same attitude towards, say, FreeCiv?
  - ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
    Not into games, but have the same sentiment towards Microsoft (with VSCode) and other companies and communities which give away software that all but clones commercial analogs while drawing profits off something else, effectively squeezing those who sell software for a living out of business.
TheRealPomax 4y ago
I hate them with a passion: do not mistake a question based on how the world seems to work for being happy with how the world works. If I use this, and it gets litigated out of existence, I'm right back to "okay so NOW what do I use?".

aidenn0 4y ago

Competition is not "monetary damages." There are oodles of orthodox file managers[1], and several of them are named "Commander" so it's not like there is a trademark case here. Compatibility with competitors software is also quite well established as being legal. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_manager#Orthodox_file_managers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_manager#Orthodox_file_man...

TheRealPomax 4y ago
So that's already a fundamental misunderstanding of how the law works, whether we like it or not (and make no mistake: I don't), competition involves making your own thing with its own look and feel, that fills the same market need. This is not that: this is a clone of the Total command look and feel, in addition to its functionality. So as someone who pays for some software, and doesn't pay for other software because it's free: how is this, from a US and EU legal perspective, legal rather than preventing a company from earning revenue by offering a near-identical clone for free? If you sell your own brand of cornflakes, with a distinct box, even if you contract the exact same third party cornflake producing plant (i.e. exactly what happens in the laundry detergent industry), that's competition. If you make your cornflakes available for free, and you use basically the same packaging as Kellogg's to the point where if you showed both to someone unfamiliar with the exact styling queues they'd go "... aren't these the same?" that's laws being broken. And from the screenshots, this sure does look identical to Total Commander. So again: is this actually legal? (it might be, I don't know, which is why I asked)
- int_19h 4y ago
  Of course it is legal. If you have some know-how that you want to protect, that's what patents are for. If you have some unique recognizable design that you want to protect, that's design patents and trademarks. But the two-panel file management paradigm predates Total Commander by many years - TC itself copied NC - so I doubt they would be able to patent anything worthwhile even if they tried.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Okay there are a few things going on here: 1. A substantially similar product I think we both agree this is legal (given your laundry detergent example) 2. Confusion for the original product in marketing materials (including packaging) - This relates primarily to trademarks law; I partially addressed this in my original comment pointing out that simply the name being of the form "X Commander" isn't likely an enforceable trademark. - The DC homepage has a screenshot, then some text, which includes the text "it is inspired by Total Commander." This seems analogous to a picture of cornflakes followed by "compare to Kellogg's Cornflakes" 3. The UI looking an awful lot like TC If the icons TC used were copyrighted, and DC used them, that's clear copyright infringement, but I don't think this is being alleged here. This gets complicated quickly; the general layout (status bar at top, clickable reminders of keyboard shortcuts at bottom, two side-by-side panes, &c) did not originate with TC, so if DC is in trouble for this, it's not with TC The great similarity in the general look is at least partly to them both using Lazarus, and partly intentional to make it easier to use by existing TC users. The similarities just from using the same toolkit are generally fine. I think the point you are raising that when combined with the intentional layout similarities this could rise to the level of product confusion; if the buttons all looked very different, but were in the same screen positions and did the exact same things, then DC would look very different from TC. As far as copying the "look and feel" Lotus v. Borland strongly suggests that the interface of an application is not subject to copyright. If TC had a design patent or trademark on the menu or toolbar look, then they could almost certainly enforce this, but it would have had to have been registered in advance.