
Reeder Calls Out MobileRSS For Design Theft, Community Backlash Begins - lotusleaf1987
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/22/reeder-mobilerss/
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kaptain
Looks like a 'typical' Chinese operation. And look: they're hiring a GUI
designer [高级美术设计师(GUI设计师)]! <http://www.nibirutech.com/careers.html> Why
bother?

Living here in China, one of the things that strikes me is that there is a
complete disregard for the value of creative work. This is, of course a
generalization, but for the most part, the education system here emphasizes
rote learning. I've got a ton of thoughts/observations related to this (I
attend a lower tier university here) but looking at the MobileRSS site, I'm
reminded that great design demands taking risks and demands careful thought,
neither of which is emphasized, culturally, here.

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trotsky
You don't have to look any further than the OS and applications you're using
right now to see the heavy re-use of design elements and UI paradigms between
competing applications. Without it happening we'd probably all be using
significantly worse software.

Used to be the community was heavily in favor of look and feel being free
game.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_v._Microsoft>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_v._Borland>

 _League for Programming Freedom (LPF) was founded in 1989 by Richard Stallman
to unite free software developers as well as developers of proprietary
software to fight against software patents and the extension of the scope of
copyright [...] The single event that had the most influence on the creation
of the League was Apple's lawsuits against Microsoft about supposed copyrights
violations of the look and feel of the Macintosh as copied in Microsoft
Windows._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_for_Programming_Freedom>

~~~
macrael
For sure, the origin of creative work is always murky and collaborative, but
there are lines and this theft flagrantly crosses them. Copying someone else's
hard work and selling it as your own is bullshit and deserves to be called
such. I don't think there is any defense for this kind of blatant copying.
(Not to mention _bad_ copying. It's amazing how, even with a good design to
crib from they managed to mess up all sorts of important details.)

~~~
trotsky
I assure you that if you had used both quattro pro and lotus 1-2-3 you
wouldn't be thinking that we're discussing the "murky and collaborative nature
of creative work" - we're talking about imitation. Interface cloning and heavy
borrowing of element layouts has a long and storied history in software design
- look at any modern GUI and they all look much more similar than dissimilar.
Is that the murky and collaborative nature of creative work? Hell no, it's
people copying off of each other. And it's a good thing, unless you think it'd
be a great idea to have to retrain everyone every time IT wanted to switch
application providers (that used to be common).

Assuming you still disagree, I'd be curious about your opinion of non design
issues. Do you think samba is bullshit for having reverse engineered the CIFS
interface allowing non windows computers to share on corporate lans? How about
various office applications that reverse engineered the file formats of
various closed competitors to allow them to save and load the formats? Surely
a lot of hard work went into designing CIFS or .xls, should that be off limits
as well? If not, why is the location of buttons on a screen a bigger deal than
the locations of bytes in a filehandle?

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macrael
I'm sorry, I was too brief in my original comment. I shouldn't have brushed
off imitation in design by talking about the murky nature of the origin of
creative work. You are quite right that a lot of good has come from people
stealing other people's design work; when people come up with something new
and good, it is usually a good thing for others in the field to incorporate
them into their own work. That's how we move forward. I mean, Reeder straight
up copied the "pull to refresh" UI element from Tweetie.

But, as in all things, there is a balance, and one can go too far. What the
developers of MobileRSS did is not wrong because they copied, it is wrong
because they _only_ copied, and didn't make it better. They didn't incorporate
good ideas from Reeder into their own, making something new and beautiful, but
rather substituted Silvio's ideas for their own which is lazy and the opposite
of good work. I know whose future development I want to support.

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Pent
Why did ReadItLater feel that they needed to get their hands dirty and
intervene? Now I have to use Instapaper.. sigh

~~~
Kylekramer
Bad news: <http://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/17674488195850240>

It is an interesting question. I mean, Reeder was clearly cloned pretty
heavily, but kneecaping interoperability in retaliation seems like a dangerous
road to head down.

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hallmark
When you are using the resources of an API, you are entering a community. And
when you abuse another respected member of the community, it responds.

These bookmarking services weren't cutting off a developer client to protect
themselves, which I consider more dangerous. They were throwing their weight
behind Reeder.

Checks and balances.

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A1kmm
How many design elements which were unique to Reeder are actually in
MobileRSS? Sure, there are similarities, but they are two software packages
which do similar a task, on the same platform.

Putting the platform specific stuff aside, they both have lots of similarities
to other RSS reader software I've seen that most likely pre-dates them both.

If I was an iPad user, and I learned that there was another (presumably less
expensive) application with all the same features as one I was using, I would
certainly bookmark it and consider switching next time I had to do a paid
upgrade - so I suspect that Reeder just scored a major own goal.

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m0nastic
Did you click on the link? The side-by-side comparison is pretty damning. I
think the similarities are way more apparent then just "similarities to other
RSS reader software".

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A1kmm
Yes I did click on the link.

The fact that the RSS stories displayed is irrelevant - that is data and not
UI. Only looking at design elements: First screen shot:

Black bar across the top - that is presumably from the OS so doesn't count.

Overall layout: both have a navigation bar at the left (fairly standard for
RSS readers), similar width (but there is probably an optimal width, and this
may be it), the bar is a different colour but on the grey-black range in both
cases (probably determined more by the platform). Both have a refresh toolbar
button at the bottom - this placement is common for RSS feed readers. Some of
the icons and icon placements are similar - how unique this is to the design
depends on how common the icon placement is. It is certainly not a blatant
copy with no changes, however - some of the positions have changed, and some
icons seem to be different.

In terms of the layout of the right-hand side pane with the content, that is
completely different. The date is displayed differently, and is repeated on
each story in Reeder. The bullet point layout is different, and the MobileRSS
version has images.

So it has some similar design elements, most of which are not particularly
unique to Reeder, and some differences. They may well have taken some
inspiration from their competitor, but they have also made some changes of
their own - in other words, the article seems to be a beat-up of legitimate
competition. I suspect the free publicity is probably going to end up helping
MobileRSS more than it hinders them.

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ugh
Reeder has a pretty unique look compared to all other RSS readers on the iPad.
You wouldn’t mistake another RSS reader for it. The bar on the left side, for
example, is not a standard UI element on the iPad (iPad apps usually have bars
at the top or bottom) and, as was said, the popover UI is also unique to
Reeder (icons instead of lists).

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satoimo
Would the Android developer community have reacted the same way?

