Slashdot Mirror
LinSpire LPhoto and LSongs: bring on the lawsuits!
Sir Joltalot writes "Over at OSNews they're covering the newly-renamed LinSpire's LSongs and LPhoto apps. Take a look at those screenshots, and you'll notice a striking resemblence to Apple's iTunes and iPhoto. Take a look at this flash presentation and you'll see that LPhoto and iPhoto are almost exactly alike. They look like nifty apps, to be sure, but how long will they last? I would have thought LinSpire might have learned from the whole Lindows name fiasco..."
Say it isn't so!
Call me a cynic, but before this entire thing, I never gave Lindows/Linspire a second glance. Now, they've been in the top of the news here at Slashdot several times. Nothing like staying in the eyes of your target audience, I guess?
But LTunes looks almost nothing like iTunes. Can somebody show me the similarity, other than the large song display? LPhoto does look very much like iPhoto... I just wonder if it has the same functionality.
Sure they look very similar, but not that similar. Firefox and IE look more similar than iTunes and LSong but I don't see people saying mozilla.org will be sued. If Linspire had named them iLPhoto and iLTunes then maybe there would be an issue with the name but I kind of doubt Apple would sue them just because they look somewhat similar. There are hundreds of free and open source software products that look very similar to commercial software but that is just the nature of the game. As long as they don't copy the blatently (i.e. Lindows) then they should be in the clear.
It seems to me all of this hubbub created by Linspire is only creating a bad rap for Linux by inviting constant litigation and controversy.
Yeah, it's still publicity, but when do they cross the line to just pissing everyone off?
Or will everyone just keep agreeing with these guerilla tactics because they "hate Microsoft"? Idiots.
Well, xPde look and feel is similar to XP, but I have not heard of Microsoft going after them...
Are you talking about x86 or PPC here, since iTunes runs on both.
But re-implementing Cocoa apps in whatever retarded toolkit they are using is a rather wasteful and round about way of demonstrating it.
It's amazing how similar the apps are, and yet LTunes still manages to look pants in comparison to iTunes. All this despite having almost exactly the same set of controls on the screen. There's more to this design business than you think.
Could could say that LTunes looks like WinAmps Music Library as well.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
They couldn't buy the kind of publicity they've been getting. Gradually caving to the big guys, changing their name and in the news *every* time the situation changes even a little bit. All for the cost of a few defensive lawyers.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Just take a look at OpenOffice...look familiar to anyone? Down to the toolbars and icons, it is a clone of Word. By design, to make the transition between the two apps easier.
So it's OK for "our" apps to copy the look and feel of a competitor we don't like, yet not OK for an "outsider" to copy the look and feel of a competitor palatable to many of us?
Give me a break...
The best feature of iPhoto and iTunes is that they integrate completely with the rest of iLife from Apple. Without this integration there wouldnt be any thing special about neither of them.
As long as the new Lindows apps doesnt integrate together, they wont last because other standalone applications exists that are better at what they do.
It was only resolved in reference to Apple v. Microsoft (and even there, Apple didn't lose on the merits of protecting look and feel, but on the wording in the licensing agreement it had with MS).
If you can argue that your product has a distinctive look and feel, then you can register for trade dress protection.
Also: you can apply for a patent for an interface (which someone else pointed out Apple has done for iPhoto).
Yes, cry me a river.
When apps _don't_ copy the look'and'feel we get all this whining about how the interface is "weird". See also: GIMP, Blender
So basically linux application GUIs are only allowed to exist in the interval marked "very very familiar -- not too different -- but different enough for my taste."
Anything else, queue the whining.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Apple paid for access to Xerox and the right to take their ideas.
How much did the theme manufacturer pay to Apple?
(And, anyway: it's a bit apples and oranges. Apple took the concepts. Theme dude took the look and feel.)
Apple lost the look-and-feel suit with Microsoft over different interpretations of a clause in one of the contracts between the companies. Microsoft argued that it allowed them to copy the GUI. They won, which I think was surprised Microsoft as much as anyone else.
I agree that software patents that protect methodologies are bad, but design is copyright law, and not patents at all. You don't see a Dodge Firebird out there, do you? Rip-offs of copyrighted designs should absolutely be stopped.
The screenshots are terrible. Is linspire a professional product? With which companies/OS is it trying to compete?
I thought that Linux UI had got beyond this stage?
And the problem is barely with the fact that they've virtually screenshot-copied from iTunes, but with the fact that the rest of the simple presentation elements (lists, titles, etc) are really poorly displayed. There's no alignment for example (something that would give it a lot of clarity), or spacing (visual simplicity, eases the user). It's the UI equivalent of a ransom note -- bits and pieces cut from elsewhere.
I understand that this is a commercially sold operating system. If they want to improve the UI of these products, I believe that I could do a better job!
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Interesting.
Do you also propose that whoever first had the idea of making the steering wheel round and placing it on the left/right sue all other manufacturers? How about the levers for the lights? They keyhole? OOhh. I know. The PEDALS.
Nah that's ridiculous. Maybe we should just stick to suing Sony and the others for placing the volume button on the left and the extra bass under it on our car stereo. What do you mean everybody does it?
You see, I could have modded you down to hell, but I chose to show how ridiculous and tiresome your Mac fanboyism is...
/. Where the truth
To summarize:
It looks almost exactly the same, but its really ugly and bad at the same time because they lack that famous apple magic.
Buddy, if apple put that out, you'd be pissing your pants over how great it is.
Look at iTunes. Horrible interface, dumb architecture...it actually insists you store you songs on both the iPod and your hard drive, so if you have a 40G iPod, you can't just rip a CD direct to your ipod...nooooo, you have to rip it to your HD, and then copy it over to your ipod. And then if you want to save some space and delete those songs, next time you sync your ipod, those songs are gone too!
Its an architecture designed by hard drive makers, because it guarantees you'll run out of disk space.
And as for the interface, if you put in a CD, it makes those tunes available in iTunes. Take out the CD, and they're still in iTunes. Only its not very obvious they're not on the HD, oh no, you click on a tune, and it just tells you the CD isn't inserted.
Its dizzying how bad the interface is. Thank heavens for XPlay.
Now what was this about Apple's fine UI?
And as soon as Steve Jobs realises it, and sues MR/LinSpire, all the WORLD will know, because the news will be covered at every Magazine/E-zine with an Internet section.
At which point, unfortunatley, I'll have to hear some random comment from my boss like "Did you hear Linux is getting sued again, it's a good thing we didn't install that at Company X like you wanted to do huh?"
Its sad that with anything we do the first thought is either, 'we might get sued' or 'lets sue someone'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Windows XP is a pale imitation of VMS and MacOS.
MacOS X is a pale imitation of BSD and NeXTStep.
Face facts, all operating systems are small evolutionary improvements over existing OSs. Stop complaining about Linux ripping off MacOS and Windows. Linux is simply learning from the grand masters of ripoffs.
Anyway, it's probably easy for a 3 person team and 1 year of calendar time to have decent clones of each one.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Are you serious? I don't know about you, but I've heard a lot of complaining right here on Slashdot about how shamelessly KDE and Gnome rip off both Windows and the Mac. (I actually think they have a point... the endlessly-duplicated Start button springs to mind, for example.)
When iPhoto, iMovie and iTunes saw the light, there was something about those apps. They were different, not standard at all, it took some time to get used to them (about 5 minutes).
And they kicked ass, you ended up wanting to use them, finding excuses and stupid projects (let's digitise all my JJ Cale albums, yeah!) to test and try every hook and nook of your mac all over again.
That's what original and good design can do for you, dear linux crowd. I'm currently feeling my way around KDE and while very impressed (all this for FREE?) I'm constantly muttering "rip-off" under my breath.
Amazingly enough a lot of linux users are very much badmouthing a lot of products that get copied almost to the last detail.
While I'm a standards freak and know they can be more important than innovation for the sake of it, there's a time and place and above all USE for originality and style. And there are many ways to express them.
LPhoto and LSong are Lame (as said in previous post) and not because they were copied (who cares), but because they were copied without LStyle and LOriginality and as such Lack LFlavour.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
The tenor of this "flame"-thread seems that providing similar apps to Linux users that the company with the original idea refuses to supply, is bad. Time to start bashing gnucash, or any of the db people. How about bashing Sun for creating Star/Open office or Mozilla for copying NCSA Mosaic.
Geez guys, Lindows is not for programmers and IT staff, it is for people who want to get away from M$ and it's strangle-hold on the home desktop. Most people can't afford the base model Mac, but, they can afford a $200 Lindows/Linspire box.
As for interface, aren't all opensource project works in progress, and getting updated all the time?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Yeah, sure, they look similar to the Apple apps. So what? My car's controls also look similar to your car's controls. IE looked similar to Netscape. Apple Mail looks similar to KMail. Safari uses roughly the same layout as other browsers. That's what makes things usable.
Apple would be really stupid to start another look-and-feel lawsuit over this--the last one cost them a lot of good will and money.
Well, Pine's not Linux. It's not even "Free," some rules lawyers would tell you. Personally, I like academic software...prefer it to GNU, because academic software has a dedicated support staff and often better usability. Academic software brought us both the Mach kernel and BSD itself -- and there's the rocketsled OS X is built on.
Incidentally, the fact that it wasn't "Free" caused several groups to clone the Pine and Pico interfaces. And that pissed me off as much as this Linspire initiative. When I found out Ryan had installed Nano instead of Pico on Webslum, I flipped my shit. Clones are for Raelians, man.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Imagine the following without intercapitalization
The same could be said of KDE (Windows ripoff), Evolution (Outlook ripoff), XMMS (WinAmp ripoff), KDevelop (DevStudio ripoff) and I daresay quite a few other OSS projects.
I can see not thinking that LSongs doesn't look like iTunes- only if you've ever used iTunes in browse mode. That's the only mode I use it in, personally. Or, maybe putting the play buttons at the bottom of the window threw you off- perhaps they have similar hopes for the judge.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Windows was a ripoff of MacOS (and to a lesser extent, CDE, which Microsoft worked on as a joint project with Sun and IBM).
Outlook was a ripoff of Eudora. Eudora was a ripoff of PINE. PINE was a ripoff of ELM. There's a long history of ripoffs there.
WinAMP was a ripoff of MP3PLAYER, the original MP3 music player from Fraunhofer.
DevStudio was a ripoff of Borland IDE.
Everything is a ripoff of something else. Just because YOU saw it first on Windows does NOT MEAN it was actually first on Windows. It only means you know a lot less than you think you do.
The karmic balance of the universe means somebody will now point out some obscure app or OS proving that I know a lot less than I think I do, and that is all good and proper.