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MetaLab Accuses Mozilla of Ripping Off UI Elements In Mockups
CWmike writes "Canadian interface design firm MetaLab has accused Mozilla of stealing user interface elements for a development tool in the browser maker's Jetpack project, which aims to simplify add-on making. MetaLab leveled the charges on Tuesday when the 11-person firm's founder, Andrew Wilkinson, blogged about the similarities between his company's designs and those posted by Mozilla for FlightDeck, a Jetpack editor. 'What they did was pretty ridiculous,' Wilkinson said on Thursday. 'There's a difference between inspiration versus ripping something off,' he said. 'The measurements of the graphic elements [Mozilla took from us] were the exact same, the very same pixels. When someone takes your images from the server hosting them, that's crossing the line.' Mozilla apologized to MetaLab on Wednesday, saying in a blog post, 'While the design direction being implemented does not utilize these design elements, we inadvertently included the early mockups in our blog post and video announcing the next phase of development for the Jetpack SDK ... We sincerely apologize to MetaLab for incorporating design elements from their web site in our early mockups and for posting them publicly without proper attribution.'" Alexander Limi of the Firefox User Experience Team points out that MetaLab has accepted the apology, too — worth bearing in mind.
Windows 7 development started in 2006. So according to you they went forward in time to steal things from KDE 4 before KDE 4 was even released in it's first alpha?
MetaLab didn't need to make a big deal about this. they could of reported it to Mozilla if it were concerned. It's obvious MetaLab posted the blog entry to get attention. Basically advertising: even negative attention is good for them. I would wager hardly anyone on Slashdot even knew MetaLab's name prior to this article. Now that this article has hit news, everyone who read it knows they could go to MetaLab to get a quote for UI design....
Obviously this whole incident will do a lot of good for MetaLab, in the way of free advertising, they will probably profit handsomely from this fiasco.
While Mozilla have used their imagery, and there is obvious similarity, they haven't included it in a user interface, they have combined the work with work of their own to express some ideas about how their final interface could look like.
I would think it's unlikely that their final design would look at all like the mockup. First mockup very rarely reflects what the final product will be.
Basically, while, the imagery Mozilla posted that had some renditions including some MetaLab design elements, it was of zero commercial value, used in the creative process.
And although a derivative work, probably fair use, providing they had only used it in the mockup.