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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.
They did (privately) report it to Mozilla first. The blog went up after Mozilla ignored them. Mozilla could have handled it privately if they were concerned. It's obvious Mozilla only apologized because they were receiving negative attention, not because they think there was a problem.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
You just need to search Slashdot, when the first screenshots of Windows 7 came out, many compared it to KDE4. Now everyone compares Seven to KDE4...which is unfair, as history shows otherwise. I doubt Aaron Seigo and related folks had inside views of Seven's development.
But as the parent implies, it seems defending KDE4 is a risky position here, I wonder why. Qt is free now, and KDE is as much of a windows clone as most window managers out there, with a taskbar and titlebars. Gnome is a windows clone too.