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Apple Still Says No To Aqua-Like Themes
JoFo writes: "Eric Yang, creator of several Aqua-like themes and skins for GTK+, KDE, Mozilla, gkrellm, and others, was forced by Apple to take down all Aqua-related projects on his web site. It appears they went to his employer as a way to strong-arm him. He writes on his web site 'I went to Apple to test cocoa for Mac OS X 10.1, and found a drag and drop problem with NSPopUpButtonCell. They didn't even pay me for my effort, yet they try to shut down my project. Isn't that ironic?'" Apple seems at least to be consistent in objecting to nearly any non-Apple project that reminds the company of Aqua, so maybe this was just a matter of time.
then when apple went to the courts when they thought microsoft had gone too far, it was already too late to do anything about that.
Um, no.
The judge did not say to Apple "you waited too long", nor any variation on that idea. First, the judge threw out Apple's claim that Apple could own a nebulous concept called "look and feel"; the judge required Apple to list specific items where MS had infringed. Then the judge went down the list, and struck out any item that was covered by Microsoft's agreement with Apple. (You know, the one where Apple agreed not to sue MS. Of course Apple did sue MS, one of the reasons I am not a fan of Apple.) Anyway, there were only 12 items on Apple's whole list that were not covered by the agreement; the judge then went down this list of 12 items and struck down all of those that Apple didn't own, which was 12: i.e. all of them. With literally nothing of Apple's case left, the judge ruled in favor of MS.
Now, when Xerox sued Apple for stealing, the judge did indeed rule "you waited too long".
The Federal Trademark Dilution Act became effective in January of 1996. Apple lost it's "look and feel" case before that, I believe it was 1995.
Of course, had The Federal Trademark Dilution Act been in effect in 1984, Apple probably wouldn't be called Apple any more, since they would have lost the trademark dispute against Apple Records.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
I just wish they would let a Mac port of Mozilla have a Mac look.
Oh give me a break. If there's that much demand for an Aqua look-and-feel "theme" for Mozilla then somebody will put in the time to add native Quartz calls to Mozilla. Adding a silly "theme" is not the way to do this when it's on the native platform of Aqua. Besides, how would you do transparencies with a theme? An Aqua "theme" would be a hack for these purposes.
If Mozilla were changed to use native aqua screen widgets, then the only thing needed to make it look like it "fits in" is a very simple theme for the menubar buttons -- a theme that Apple wouldn't complain about at all and it would be 100% original artwork.
- j
Apple lost that case because it HAD licensed the Mac UI (or elements thereof) to MS for Windows 1.0 and subsequent versions, because otherwise MS threatened to cancel Word for Mac (which had 50% of the mac wp market).
This skin issue is different; nobody's licensed the look & feel from apple.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
For starters, you can't copyright a color. Period. Thus your argument that my argument is invalid is invalid. All visible colors fall under the umbrella of prior art. You can copyright certain works using color. For instance you could paint a board red, hang it on the wall, call it a work of art, and own the copyright on it.
Good luck prosecuting people who "steal" your ip. Even if the red is the only board that previously existed with the "exact shade."
IP is only ip to the extent that it can be effectively protected. That is lesson number one in the ip "biz."
What you CAN do is define a logo that contains the words "Ferrari Red" and copyright, and trademark * THAT LOGO.* The copyright on the logo confers no protections whatsoever on the words contained within that logo, nor on the color they refer to. So, you can only buy "Ferrari Red" paint from Ferrari because Ferrari controls the name *Ferrari*, and thus the paint name and logo, not because they control the actual light wavelength reflected by the paint.
This is precisely the reason there are so many doofy names for colors. You *cannot protect the color.* So you make up a NAME for it you can protect.
And of course there is the fact that there is really no such thing as Ferrari Red in the first place. Ferrari has used literally dozens of different shades of red. There is also the fact that Ferrari didn't even invent the phrase, and it was in widespread public use before Ferrari ever used it. It was, in fact, forced on them through public use. Prior art.
You are also, of course, aware that virtually every Ferrari, even those painted the *same* color, are in fact different colors? What is the *exact* shade of "Ferrari Red"? How is it defined? How is its use defended when it isn't true that it can only be obtained from authorized Ferrari repairers because any dumb schlub at the paint store can simply mix up unlimited supplies of it for you? You can do it yourself on your desktop if you wish.
Are you even begining to get my point, which was *there are limits to trademarkability?*
What's more, a trademark or copyright *does not* confer title. This is perhaps the most misunderstood part of this branch of ip law. In truth *title* can only be granted by a JUDGE reviewing the facts of a particular challange.
Ferrari *owns* the shape of its cars because a JUDGE, reviewing an actual case has *said so.*
Oh, it was an American judge by the way, thus in truth Ferrari only owns the shape of its cars in America and those countries that will respect that American decision.
Trademark and copyright are not the same as registering your car. The fact of the matter is that you can have copyright and trademark certificates in hand and STILL not have the rights they seem to confer on you.
KFG
Several reasons for not using OS-native widgets:
* HTML4 requires that you be able to make listboxes with a tree image in the background. How would you do that on Windows, where you don't have access to the widget code? Mozilla would be forced to use the common subset of what each OS's listbox provides, which would be a very limited listbox.
* Native widgets sometimes have subtle restrictions. For example, Windows 98 will become unstable if you create several hundred native listboxes. (It usually doesn't crash, but toolbars will stop appearing in new windows; I consider that to be instability.) Internet Explorer suffers from this problem every time I get mod points on Slashdot, but open several top-level stories in different windows before I notice.
* Native widgets may have less subtle restrictions, such as limits on the amount of text a textbox can contain.
The shareholder is always right.
There is still a lot of the theme technology from Mac OS 9 in Mac OS X. When artists complained that Aqua was too colorful, they added a "Graphite" theme to go with "Blue". Even though they are identical except for colors, these really are two themes. It's just that there is no theme interface for the user to add more themes, and no public documentation on "how to make Mac OS X themes". They could still open it up later, once people start to know what Mac OS X looks like, understand that it is different from Mac OS 9, and assume that a Mac is running Mac OS X no matter what it looks like. While 9 and X co-exist, it's important for X to look "like itself". They are getting tons of user feedback, and following that feedback quite closely ... it helps if all the users are using the same GUI ... it helps if Adobe doesn't have to hear from skinning enthusiasts about how their panels won't skin or whatever in their first Mac OS X app. There's enough to do already, with a complete rewrite of an OS.
A big problem that became evident with themes on Mac OS 8 and 9 (and maybe soon on Windows XP) is that they break really easily when you have a large and diverse GUI application platform that already exists before you start skinning the OS. Out of any ten Mac apps, you would find one or two of them wouldn't skin right because they had custom UI elements or design elements that were meant to go with the default look. I heard that Microsoft was trying to drop themes from Windows XP for this reason, but they are in there in some limited fashion, apparently.
The Aqua guidelines warn application developers not to assume that the GUI will always look like it does now, so Apple is trying to keep their options open for later. Maybe for Aqua II, and maybe for themes. With all the work they've done for Mac OS X, I think they probably could live with the idea of putting themes on hold for a while. Mac OS 8 was on the cutting-edge of skinning interfaces, but it also got to see a lot of the problems with the process. Mac OS X version 11 might be the place to work that shit out. They can sell a journaling file system to pros and themes to consumers and kids.
And this is why he was shutdown. Just read the FAQ on that page and you will see that he had a blue apple in his theme. I don't think this is look and feel at all. It's because he used the freakin LOGO is why he had his themes shutdown. In fact, I believe you can still get the Aqua like look in enlightenment and the like from Themes.org, just not the Apple logos.
Look and feel is ok, just don't use the TRADEMARKED logo.
Gorkman
Want some cheese to go with that whine? Didn't this guy steal all the widgets from Omniweb?
How much helping of writing a library did you do? Bug-fixes shouldn't count. I think Apple is great with developers in OS X, short of bringing out Steve Ballmer to chant it. I wouldn't expect Apple to lend a hand with Mozilla, they have not a lot of interest in it.
As for Mozilla with an Aqua UI - it's a great idea - check out http://sourceforge.net/projects/qbati2/
Until Linux folks understand basic principles of GUI design and are willing to accept widget layouts based on principles of cognitive psychology and not on "because it looks cool" or "Windows does it", we are all far better off with linux looking plain butt ugly. I have gotten really, really sick of many developers in both KDE and GNOME being only concerned with aesthetics and making the ultimate critera for good GUI design being "it looks perty". If I had a dollar for every absolutely beautiful set of themed widget laid out in the most confusing and usuable manner possible, I could hire both desktop environments teams of competant HCI professionals. It might be far better that potential linux converts won't have aesthetically pleasing themes that might suck them into a world software with even less usability than Windows. Maybe a lack of attractive themes would force the linux desktop environments to focus on areas of the GUI that really count in a user getting their work done. A macintosh from 10 years ago is still more usable than tonights build of GNOME or KDE. And it's far, far less pretty. Themes? Prettiness? A really GUI programmer craves these things not.