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MetaLab Accuses Mozilla of Ripping Off UI Elements In Mockups

Posted by timothy on from the classic-miscommunication dept.

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.

8 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Open source, steal? by nacturation · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Without stealing of ideas, we wouldn't have Open Office which implemented feature-for-feature what Microsoft Office has. Without stealing, we wouldn't have KDE and Gnome with implemented many features from Windows and OS X. How could open source survive without it? :)

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    1. Re:Open source, steal? by The+Turd+Burglar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How could open source survive without it? :)

      Coming up with your own ideas instead of cloning everyone else's?

    2. Re:Open source, steal? by PitaBred · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's impossible. You can't live in a vacuum, and EVERYTHING is derivative to one degree or another.

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    3. Re:Open source, steal? by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh please! Can we let this old 'for the starving (insert authors/inventors/artists) bullshit just DIAF already? Sure that was true back when copyrights were first invented, you know when they were actually SANE, but that time has been gone for decades now. All copyrights and patents do know is crush the little guy who can't compete with supermegacorp who has a patent warchest or pile of copyrights the size of the great pyramids.

      You want proof? One sentence-Steamboat Willie is STILL under copyright. Than man has been dead since before cars had seatbelts, yet one of his first works, made when planes were made of cloth and antibiotics were but a dream, is STILL under copyrights! This gross abuse of power is why innovation in this country (with the exception of laws and ponzi schemes) is pretty much dead, as the only way to survive the patent trolls and other leeches is to sell out to some multinational who will give you pennies while they rake in the truckloads of cash.

      So please, just put down the Ayn Rand and smell the fail, okay? All this "IP" crap has done is give supermegacorps like Disney enough cash to buy out every politician on the planet, while making sure the little guy doesn't have a chance in hell. it is like all this stupidity of record companies suing each other because one of their bands made a song that sounds like something already in their catalog. Well duh! There are only 12 notes in the western scale, and thanks to copyrights being "forever minus a single day" now the odds of find 4 or 5 chords that don't grate on your ears that someone else hadn't ever played before is pretty much zilch. Or should we stop all artists from recording now because it may infringe on some supermegacorp's back catalog?

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  2. Snore by some_guy_88 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Company does something wrong.

    Company apologizes.

    Accuser accepts apology.

    Slow news day?

  3. This was a mockup people by OnlyJedi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, a company decided to take shortcuts in creating a mockup of a project still in early development, and is being blasted because of it? Seriously, this was nowhere near a final release or even a beta release. It was a mockup, designed solely to get across an idea of what the final product interface would look like. Tasking an art team to create all-new icons and artwork is generally counter to the idea of the quick-and-dirty nature of mockups.

    1. Re:This was a mockup people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So, a company decided to take shortcuts in creating a mockup

      No, they showed it to the public. Public demo trumps mockup, and they deserve a bit of flak for this one.

  4. Re:Under 30, are you? by Saint+Stephen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I guess you forgot Harvard Graphics :-)