4 ms·

When 37Signals wrote a blog post showing this design style outrageously improved conversions they must have expected that lots of folks would copycat. Is DHH a

by aresant 15y ago

When 37Signals wrote a blog post showing this design style outrageously improved conversions they must have expected that lots of folks would copycat. Is DHH as pissed off at Elance for the blatant copy? https://www.elance.com/ https://www.elance.com/ There's a difference between eLance's "inspiration" and actually referencing hosted images & code that CureBit did, but it's not a night and day difference. Murky territory with us all copying eachother's moments of brilliance, but I don't think curebit deserves the full bodyslam, "scumbag" treatment.

veyron 15y ago
Copying the design doesn't necessarily deserve "scumbag" treatment. Some brusque words, sure, but certainly not the escalation of DHH. What Curebit did DEFINITELY qualifies as scumbag. There's some unknown tangible cost for 37signals (in the form of bandwidth, hosting assets for a competitor's site). There are small claims court cases considering similar situations nearly every day.
- slig 15y ago
  What about their logo? https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163298220322209792 https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163298220322209792
  - aresant 15y ago
    Ouch. I hadn't seen that one as part of the story. The whole looks worse that the preliminary part mentioned in this story OP.
  - kingsidharth 15y ago
    <sarcasm> Naah, they were just A/B testing that one. I guess crediting it will make it fine. Unless the other party demands it to be taken down.</sarcasm>
  - dwynings 15y ago
    This one? http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retro-rocket-ship http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retr...
minus1 15y ago
I believe there is a clear legal difference here. These things are over the line (and illegal): Using images without permission Using code without permission Referencing images and code from another site without permission Gray area: Designing a site from scratch to roughly copy another site's design
- jphackworth 15y ago
  Referencing images and code from another site without permission This is not illegal, merely poor form and also a bad technical decision because the other site can then control you. If this were illegal, you would have to get permission from other sites to use iframes. Things like stumbleupon's web version couldn't exist.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
smoody 15y ago
Agreed. 37Signals generates numerous "lessons learned" posts under the pretense (implied or otherwise) of helping other people learn from their experience. If they don't see it that way, they should add the text "This design is ours and if you copy it or produce anything that looks like it, we'll publicly humiliate you f'ers and insult your investors as well!" to the beginning of each of their supposedly educational posts. Or, they should spell out the degree to which something has to be changed before they'll be okay with it. Such as "you can put a big customer image on the page because, well, we didn't invent that. You can also put screenshots on the page because, well, we didn't invent that either. And same goes for customer quotes, checklists, and company logos. But we'll take you down if you put checklists with green checks to the right of the giant customer image, a quote to the right of the client's head, and two screenshots below the checklist, etc., etc." That said, it is an unfortunate that Curebit linked to 37's assets instead of creating their own. And it is clearly a copy beyond just the linked assets. But I don't think it's an international incident on the order of Wikileaks or such. But that's how it's being treated for some reason. Personally, I would have emailed Curebit privately and asked them to change it instead of trying to tarnish an individual's and company's reputation. That's called "being civil," but that's not how 37Signals works. Remember the time Google created something that resembled Campfire as a demonstration of what Google App Engine could do? It was a 3-pane window with a chat log on the left, the name of the room and a list of people in the room on the right, and a text entry area across the bottom. 37Signals treated it as if they were the first and only company to develop a chat client that worked that way. Here's a link to that incident: http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/08/google-to-close-huddlechat/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/08/google-to-close-huddlechat/ Here's the choice (dangling) quote: "we’re just disappointed that they stooped so low to basically copy it feature for feature, layout for layout…We thought that would be beneath Google, but maybe its time to reevaluate what they stand for." Really?
ryanbraganza 15y ago
He's not pissed off at elance https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163363094834319360 https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163363094834319360 Also interesting: https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163190258593304576 https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163190258593304576 I think this cooled down a lot quicker if Grant had made a better reply. DHH didn't start out by calling them scumbags. (See his twitter feed)

by aresant 15y ago

veyron 15y ago

Copying the design doesn't necessarily deserve "scumbag" treatment. Some brusque words, sure, but certainly not the escalation of DHH. What Curebit did DEFINITELY qualifies as scumbag. There's some unknown tangible cost for 37signals (in the form of bandwidth, hosting assets for a competitor's site). There are small claims court cases considering similar situations nearly every day.

slig 15y ago
What about their logo? https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163298220322209792 https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163298220322209792
- aresant 15y ago
  Ouch. I hadn't seen that one as part of the story. The whole looks worse that the preliminary part mentioned in this story OP.
- kingsidharth 15y ago
  <sarcasm> Naah, they were just A/B testing that one. I guess crediting it will make it fine. Unless the other party demands it to be taken down.</sarcasm>
- dwynings 15y ago
  This one? http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retro-rocket-ship http://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-5418738/stock-vector-retr...

minus1 15y ago

I believe there is a clear legal difference here. These things are over the line (and illegal): Using images without permission Using code without permission Referencing images and code from another site without permission Gray area: Designing a site from scratch to roughly copy another site's design

jphackworth 15y ago
Referencing images and code from another site without permission This is not illegal, merely poor form and also a bad technical decision because the other site can then control you. If this were illegal, you would have to get permission from other sites to use iframes. Things like stumbleupon's web version couldn't exist.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

smoody 15y ago

Agreed. 37Signals generates numerous "lessons learned" posts under the pretense (implied or otherwise) of helping other people learn from their experience. If they don't see it that way, they should add the text "This design is ours and if you copy it or produce anything that looks like it, we'll publicly humiliate you f'ers and insult your investors as well!" to the beginning of each of their supposedly educational posts. Or, they should spell out the degree to which something has to be changed before they'll be okay with it. Such as "you can put a big customer image on the page because, well, we didn't invent that. You can also put screenshots on the page because, well, we didn't invent that either. And same goes for customer quotes, checklists, and company logos. But we'll take you down if you put checklists with green checks to the right of the giant customer image, a quote to the right of the client's head, and two screenshots below the checklist, etc., etc." That said, it is an unfortunate that Curebit linked to 37's assets instead of creating their own. And it is clearly a copy beyond just the linked assets. But I don't think it's an international incident on the order of Wikileaks or such. But that's how it's being treated for some reason. Personally, I would have emailed Curebit privately and asked them to change it instead of trying to tarnish an individual's and company's reputation. That's called "being civil," but that's not how 37Signals works. Remember the time Google created something that resembled Campfire as a demonstration of what Google App Engine could do? It was a 3-pane window with a chat log on the left, the name of the room and a list of people in the room on the right, and a text entry area across the bottom. 37Signals treated it as if they were the first and only company to develop a chat client that worked that way. Here's a link to that incident: http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/08/google-to-close-huddlechat/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/08/google-to-close-huddlechat/ Here's the choice (dangling) quote: "we’re just disappointed that they stooped so low to basically copy it feature for feature, layout for layout…We thought that would be beneath Google, but maybe its time to reevaluate what they stand for." Really?

ryanbraganza 15y ago

He's not pissed off at elance https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163363094834319360 https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163363094834319360 Also interesting: https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163190258593304576 https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/163190258593304576 I think this cooled down a lot quicker if Grant had made a better reply. DHH didn't start out by calling them scumbags. (See his twitter feed)