Another thought: Why are degrees of "stealing" okay? Andrew notes that his works are "derivative" of others. How much do you have to change another person's design before it's not considered "stealing"? How "inspired" can something be before it's no longer inspired and simply copied?
Metalab's Andrew Wilkinson responds again: (The Great Mozilla Debacle)
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Re: Metalab's Andrew Wilkinson responds again: (The Great Mozilla Debacle)
#12I would like to know what they have learnt from all this and how they are going to deal with cases like this in the future. 'Cos it seems to happen a lot and their way to respond is by "making a big stink".
I was hoping they would mention that in their blog post.
Thats exactly why I read the post as well. Heres hoping the metalab guys would respond to it here.
Re: Metalab's Andrew Wilkinson responds again: (The Great Mozilla Debacle)
#13Rule of thumb: If you don't have big enough balls to call a business contact and personally ask them to explain themselves when they do something you don't like or make a mistake, then you are not ready to run your own business.
With all due respect, what makes you qualified to say who is and isn't ready to run a business? Do you own your own business? Is it doing as well as MetaLab? The best part of owning a business is getting to handle situations like this however you want, and living with the consequences on your own terms.
This is news.yc... unqualified opinions are a dime a dozen.
The best part of owning a business is getting to handle situations like this however you want, and living with the consequences on your own terms.
I think that brandon272 has a point, but he didn't articulate it very well. MetaLab has been successful, but I don't think that stunts like this have caused them to be successful.
Re: Metalab's Andrew Wilkinson responds again: (The Great Mozilla Debacle)
#14I am disappointed by this one-sided-cat-fight. It is the first one I have seen from MetaLab, and it has changed my opinion of the company drastically.
By making such a line-in-the-sand issue out of this, they portray themselves as (a) small, (b) insecure, and (c) immature. Mozilla showed no ill intention (and there is plenty of that out there), no high level commitment (this is a Labs project that hasn't been released), and were immediately responsive to the situation.
The issue here is that this could have easily been resolved with an email or a phone call. A savvy salesman would probably recognize continued interest by the client and follow up with a stronger sell. Instead, they threw mud, and lots of it. They replaced their landing page with mud flinging, just in case anyone who was unaware of the situation stopped by their website to do business.
Above all, this skirmish tells me that when you do business with MetaLab, you are doing business with a single person, and that person is still pretty green. He has some great designers working with him, but they might be better off at a bigger, less inexperienced firm (hint, hint, competitors).
I also learned of a site http://www.campaignmonitor.com/ designed by http://www.31three.com/portfolio/ that is exactly the same as and predates MetaLab's http://www.getballpark.com/
Re: Metalab's Andrew Wilkinson responds again: (The Great Mozilla Debacle)
#15I'd never work with Metalab or use their products based on their handling of this. Not even a "next time we'll try private channels first" or any admission of error. Lame.
Excuse me, but what error did they make? Mozilla made the error. Metalab probably could have handled it privately, but then they wouldn't have gotten the publicity.
From a startup founder point of view, I think Andrew did exactly the right thing. He massively increased the profile of his company and he got an apology from Mozilla.
Re: Metalab's Andrew Wilkinson responds again: (The Great Mozilla Debacle)
#16Metalab should have solved this through private channels instead of in front of everyone.
I would say that Metalab should have used a bit more tact. Even in Metalab's response they sounds like Mozilla committed a crime. I give kudos to Mozilla for fixing the issue so quickly, the gave it the right amount of attention and moved on.
Re: Metalab's Andrew Wilkinson responds again: (The Great Mozilla Debacle)
#17[Mozilla was in the wrong for including the mockup in their launch materials, and I'm certainly not saying MetaLab should open source their website's design, but...]
There should more of an open source culture among designers. It works for programmers, why not designers?
Perhaps it would lead to fewer rip offs if there was quality open source designs to build on ("source" meaning the original .psd's or equivalent). It also would help create better looking open source software and websites.
Is there anything equivalent to GitHub in the design world? (deviantART with less anime drawings, maybe)
Re: Metalab's Andrew Wilkinson responds again: (The Great Mozilla Debacle)
#18I'd never work with Metalab or use their products based on their handling of this. Not even a "next time we'll try private channels first" or any admission of error. Lame.
Excuse me, but what error did they make? Mozilla made the error. Metalab probably could have handled it privately, but then they wouldn't have gotten the publicity. From a startup founder point of view, I think Andrew did exactly the right thing. He massively increased the profile of his company and he got an apology from Mozilla.
>He massively increased the profile of his company and he got an apology from Mozilla.
At the cost of a lot of potential clients. A lot of companies will hesitate to deal with MetaLab in future, considering that MetaLab are not even apologetic about making this a PR issue rather than talking to Mozilla first. When a company redirects its landing page to a blog post about being ripped off, they just look like a bunch of immature kids.
Re: Metalab's Andrew Wilkinson responds again: (The Great Mozilla Debacle)
#19Another thought: Why are degrees of "stealing" okay? Andrew notes that his works are "derivative" of others. How much do you have to change another person's design before it's not considered "stealing"? How "inspired" can something be before it's no longer inspired and simply copied?
The issue of being "inspired" by other people's designs does not appear to be a relevant case here. When the degree of stealing is a practical copy and paste, it is more in the territory of stealing than inspiration. It might be better understood if you think of it as music. I don't know what they are, but I believe there are legally specific percentages of how much a melody or chain of notes needs to be changed before it is not considered the same song.