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1. Contributory copyright infringement: This can't be easily justified; Apple must prove that the primary purpose of the software is to infringe copyright. Napster tried to argue that most of its users were law-abiding citizens who swapped only public domain MP3s, when this blatantly wasn't true. However, in this case, most of the users are just creating their own themes. The fact that the theme editor makes it possible to copy some of Apple's graphics is incidental - it's not the main use for the software, and it's not what the majority of users will do with it. I don't think Apple would win this one in court (but then, they can probably afford much better lawyers).
2. Reverse engineering of MacOS: This one's a bit stickier. Apple never released the specs in public to do what Macthemes does. Therefore the authors must have reverse-engineered MacOS, claim Apple. However, go read the macthemes.org statement about the prior case some while back with Sega about this kind of thing. A couple of points are important: There is no reverse-engineered code in Macthemes. They just derived the specs for the themes and use those. Also, they're not making a profit from the knowledge, so the use can be deemed experimental or educational. It could be argued that they are detracting from the MacOS UI consistency/feel/whatever, which is a big selling point. But on the other hand they are arguably adding to the user experience. I think you'd find it hard to convince a court that they were actually harming the product's image or causing loss of earnings.

"avi tevanian: hey steve, look! some guys are doing kaleidoscope for os X!"

You paint a convincing scene, but I should point out that the Mac Themes project has nothing to do with OS X: it's about theming OS 8.5 and its descendents through the Appearance Manager. Here's what they say about OS X support on their web site:

This document is not currently ready for publication. At a later date, we will be posting all of the information we know about using themes in Mac OS X, as well as updates about our development tools. Please check back at a later date, expecially once OS X final is released, information will be posted here frequently.

While GNUstep has been more or less keeping up with the changes to the OpenStep API made in Cocoa, there are going to be issues, and a porting from Cocoa to GNUstep while be more than a re-compile. Not a major pain in the arse, methinks, but not a 10 minute just-run-make jobbie. For one, the GNUstep Distributed Object classes (NSConnection and friends) do not follow the same protocol (the methods) as the Cocoa version. I'm sure there are other differences, but as Cocoa is totally finalized, they might catch up.

Mac OS X uses Display PDF now, not Display PostScript. This actually also might effect the porting of applications between GNUstep, Cocoa, and OpenStep. With GNUstep and OpenStep, you can put straight-up PostScript code in your app- Cocoa wouldn't know what to do with this. This isn't a big problem, though.

It is also a beautiful interface, now, from the eyecandy point of view. They've taken the Step interface (see Windowmaker and Afterstep) and combined it with the good ol' Mac menubar. That bar at the bottom... it's the Dock.

What are you talking about on this one? While Mac OS X does resemble the OpenStep UI in some ways, in the ways that WindowMaker and others implements, it's almost nothing like it (title bar, general look of widgets). I would agree that Aqua is beatutiful, and more importantly, quite functional- but for those of you who want a more classic NeXT interface, check out MacThemes, which has begun to document the Mac OS X theme format.

OS 8.5 and up have used themes, Apple even released four different ones with early versions of 8.5, but then Steve changed his mind. the above link is one of a good number of places that offer Mac themes. Kaleidoscope is not really themes, it's an extra extension, and it tends to cause stuff to crash unpleasantly...

Bottom line is, yes, themes will be reverse-engineered soon enough, even if Apple doesn't provide a spec.

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And, if they were a little more informed they'd know they'd know about chrome!
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...and the most informed of all will sneer derisively at the concept as chrome can never perfectly replicate the intricacies of an operating system's native widgets (look or feel), and as soon as the user decides to use a system-wide theming program such as Kaleidoscope (or the built in MacOS theming system) Mozilla looks awfully out of place.

Sorry, but Chrome is a poor excuse for native UI widgets. Even if you can match the look - not always possible - the behavior is usually pretty shoddy.

(And it's going to be even worse when MacOS X hits...)

- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)

As a matter of fact, 2) has already occurred - check out macthemes

Now, the appearance manager will doubtless have been modified in OS X, but it shouldn't take too much longer for the same people to revers-engineer the modifications...