That would be the case if stampready were selling it and emailonacid were giving it away for free.
Instead, Stamp Ready is a mac app which sells for about $30. Emailonacid is a subscription based service that goes for free to $70/month.
Neither simply offer the theme on its own. Both require some sort of purchase or subscription at which point the theme is made available.
That said, I agree that it can't really be considered lost sales. If I wanted to use StampReady I can't in general because I don't have easy access to a Mac, and the only build they have is a mac app.
Likewise, without this blog post, there is no way for me to know that either stampready or emailonacid host that theme. Neither of them advertise it on their site. I wouldn't ever choose one over the other because of the existence of that theme; I don't even know it's there until I've already got a subscription to one of them. In that way it's even more ephemeral.
I mean, sure, there is IP theft going on, but the actual impact is really hard to gauge. You're not losing customers; you're not losing sales. You're providing the other company with some marginal perceived value that they didn't have to put the same effort into building.
However, the most ironic thing about this is: without your blog post, I didn't know about emailonacid. It's actually a service that I haven't investigated and looks like it can solve some issues I've had with other mailing services. I can't make user of StampReady as I said because of the limitations of being a mac app.
I can't say I'm going to use emailonacid, but you've definitely increased my awareness of the brand, and provided an amount of free advertising that I would have never got before. I've hunted around their site looking for evidence of that theme and actually got a bunch of information about them.
If this was a ploy to advertise for them, then it worked very well. If not, then I think it was very counterproductive.
Instead, Stamp Ready is a mac app which sells for about $30. Emailonacid is a subscription based service that goes for free to $70/month.
Neither simply offer the theme on its own. Both require some sort of purchase or subscription at which point the theme is made available.
That said, I agree that it can't really be considered lost sales. If I wanted to use StampReady I can't in general because I don't have easy access to a Mac, and the only build they have is a mac app.
Likewise, without this blog post, there is no way for me to know that either stampready or emailonacid host that theme. Neither of them advertise it on their site. I wouldn't ever choose one over the other because of the existence of that theme; I don't even know it's there until I've already got a subscription to one of them. In that way it's even more ephemeral.
I mean, sure, there is IP theft going on, but the actual impact is really hard to gauge. You're not losing customers; you're not losing sales. You're providing the other company with some marginal perceived value that they didn't have to put the same effort into building.
However, the most ironic thing about this is: without your blog post, I didn't know about emailonacid. It's actually a service that I haven't investigated and looks like it can solve some issues I've had with other mailing services. I can't make user of StampReady as I said because of the limitations of being a mac app.
I can't say I'm going to use emailonacid, but you've definitely increased my awareness of the brand, and provided an amount of free advertising that I would have never got before. I've hunted around their site looking for evidence of that theme and actually got a bunch of information about them.
If this was a ploy to advertise for them, then it worked very well. If not, then I think it was very counterproductive.