

Metalab's Andrew Wilkinson responds again: (The Great Mozilla Debacle) - Painbird
http://blog.metalabdesign.com/post/440371465/the-great-mozilla-debacle

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ynniv
I am disappointed by this one-sided-cat-fight. It is the first one I have seen
from MetaLab, and it has changed my opinion of the company drastically.

By making such a line-in-the-sand issue out of this, they portray themselves
as (a) small, (b) insecure, and (c) immature. Mozilla showed no ill intention
(and there is plenty of that out there), no high level commitment (this is a
Labs project that hasn't been released), and were _immediately responsive_ to
the situation.

The issue here is that this could have easily been resolved with an email or a
phone call. A savvy salesman would probably recognize continued interest by
the client and follow up with a stronger sell. Instead, they threw mud, and
lots of it. They replaced their landing page with mud flinging, just in case
anyone who was unaware of the situation stopped by their website to do
business.

Above all, this skirmish tells me that when you do business with MetaLab, you
are doing business with a single person, and that person is still pretty
green. He has some great designers working with him, but they might be better
off at a bigger, less inexperienced firm (hint, hint, competitors).

I also learned of a site <http://www.campaignmonitor.com/> designed by
<http://www.31three.com/portfolio/> that is exactly the same as and predates
MetaLab's <http://www.getballpark.com/>

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ryanb
Metalab should have solved this through private channels instead of in front
of everyone.

~~~
xelipe
I would say that Metalab should have used a bit more tact. Even in Metalab's
response they sounds like Mozilla committed a crime. I give kudos to Mozilla
for fixing the issue so quickly, the gave it the right amount of attention and
moved on.

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jayair
I would like to know what they have learnt from all this and how they are
going to deal with cases like this in the future. 'Cos it seems to happen a
lot and their way to respond is by "making a big stink".

~~~
brandon272
I was hoping they would mention that in their blog post.

~~~
jayair
Thats exactly why I read the post as well. Heres hoping the metalab guys would
respond to it here.

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staunch
I'd never work with Metalab or use their products based on their handling of
this. Not even a "next time we'll try private channels first" or any admission
of error. Lame.

~~~
dcurtis
Excuse me, but what error did they make? Mozilla made the error. Metalab
probably could have handled it privately, but then they wouldn't have gotten
the publicity.

From a startup founder point of view, I think Andrew did exactly the right
thing. He massively increased the profile of his company and he got an apology
from Mozilla.

~~~
chaosprophet
_> He massively increased the profile of his company and he got an apology
from Mozilla._

At the cost of a lot of potential clients. A lot of companies will hesitate to
deal with MetaLab in future, considering that MetaLab are not even apologetic
about making this a PR issue rather than talking to Mozilla first. When a
company redirects its landing page to a blog post about being ripped off, they
just look like a bunch of immature kids.

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brandon272
Another thought: Why are _degrees_ of "stealing" okay? Andrew notes that his
works are "derivative" of others. How much do you have to change another
person's design before it's not considered "stealing"? How "inspired" can
something be before it's no longer inspired and simply copied?

~~~
hkuo
The issue of being "inspired" by other people's designs does not appear to be
a relevant case here. When the degree of stealing is a practical copy and
paste, it is more in the territory of stealing than inspiration. It might be
better understood if you think of it as music. I don't know what they are, but
I believe there are legally specific percentages of how much a melody or chain
of notes needs to be changed before it is not considered the same song.

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tlrobinson
[Mozilla was in the wrong for including the mockup in their launch materials,
and I'm certainly not saying MetaLab should open source their website's
design, but...]

There should more of an open source culture among designers. It works for
programmers, why not designers?

Perhaps it would lead to fewer rip offs if there was quality open source
designs to build on ("source" meaning the original .psd's or equivalent). It
also would help create better looking open source software and websites.

Is there anything equivalent to GitHub in the design world? (deviantART with
less anime drawings, maybe)

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brandon272
Rule of thumb: If you don't have big enough balls to call a business contact
and personally ask them to explain themselves when they do something you don't
like or make a mistake, then you are not ready to run your own business.

~~~
qeorge
With all due respect, what makes you qualified to say who is and isn't ready
to run a business? Do you own your own business? Is it doing as well as
MetaLab?

The best part of owning a business is getting to handle situations like this
however you want, and living with the consequences on your own terms.

~~~
brandon272
It's just my opinion. I made no claims about being "qualified" to dictate who
else is qualified.

My _opinion_ is that running a business more often than not requires, for lack
of a better term, "having balls". You need to make difficult and tough
decisions on a day to day basis. You need to be able to follow through and
stand behind what you're doing.

As far as MetaLab's success, I have no idea whether or not my business is
doing better or worse than MetaLab. MetaLab appears to have a steady stream of
projects. And, don't get me wrong, I think Andrew is a great designer (as are
his colleagues). I just think that his handling of these situations,
especially the Mozilla situation, has been poor. I also think he needs to grow
a pair and learn to defend his designs directly instead of engaging in
theatrics via his blog and Twitter.

