I'm a designer/developer too, and this has been a long-time observation of mine. While there is openness in design (and a whole sub-culture which is dedicated to making life easier), there isn't much among Designers (afaik).
I've been inspired by many and have inspired a few designs as well, but rather than being bitter about it, I follow the thought process of my primal developer instinct - Did they make it better or worse? If they did make it better, what did they do differently, What can I learn from them, etc.
While I do get pissed off about blatant copying, I can't condone what LayerVault did in this instance - Block DesignModo's original designs which were allegedly[1] inspired by LayerVaults icons.
[1] - Various other entities (The Noun Project, Facebook, etc) have had similar icons (Settings Cog, Man Speech bubble, Newsfeed icon) a lot earlier than LV.
I think what LayerVault has done is awful too! I wasn't trying to defend them at all. I just didn't agree with the idea that designers are less open than developers. Flat-UI and LayerVault may be riding a trend but neither one can claim ownership of anything except the exact assets they've created. There might be a fine line where a color scheme is used in such a way where it can be construed as plagiarism or maybe the icons were recreated from scratch to look exactly like LayerVault's but still preserving plausible deniability and those cases I might be able to get behind Layervault being upset. I liken it to Queen suing Vanilla Ice for using their riff in 'Ice Ice Baby' or how that one One Direction song sounds almost exactly like the Clash song whose name escapes me right now. In those cases it's just plain obvious the artist was trying to sample someone else's music but changed the riff just enough to be able to call it their own. And that brings me to the subjective part. The developer in me hates that there's not an exact answer to the question "When does inspiration become plagiarism" but that's life.
I've been inspired by many and have inspired a few designs as well, but rather than being bitter about it, I follow the thought process of my primal developer instinct - Did they make it better or worse? If they did make it better, what did they do differently, What can I learn from them, etc.
While I do get pissed off about blatant copying, I can't condone what LayerVault did in this instance - Block DesignModo's original designs which were allegedly[1] inspired by LayerVaults icons.
[1] - Various other entities (The Noun Project, Facebook, etc) have had similar icons (Settings Cog, Man Speech bubble, Newsfeed icon) a lot earlier than LV.