As a matter of fact, I wrote that very program, Switchboard.
It's getting late and I don't want to write a whole book about it's design (though I could), but basically here's the story:
I saw some mockups Daniel Fore (the project's founder and lead designer) created for a hypothetical system settings app. Here's an example: http://danrabbit.deviantart.com/art/User-Accounts-Plug-19860...
I set about coding the app. I was painfully aware of the visual similarities between OS X and Switchboard. I spent literally MONTHS wracking my brain trying to find a better design which was as elegant and efficient. I argued with Dan (who had created a mockup which would become the main interface for switchboard, which you linked), I talked to other designers, I mocked things up by hand. And I/we came up with some really creative alternatives which looked very little like System Preferences in OS X.
In the end however, I was faced with an ultimatum. Do I change the settings app JUST to look different than OS X, and lose out on the well-established excellence of Apple's design?
I truly felt awful about having to face that question. Frankly, it made me upset and depressed for quite a bit. Ultimately however, I was convinced and just said "screw it".
You're absolutely right that I'm not the first one to "copy" Apple's settings program. Here's Ubuntu's. It's extremely similar to the two ones you linked: http://zeth.net/archive/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ubuntu111...
You could say that I failed. You could say I failed to come up with a better interface. And in that sense, I did. But I get extremely frustrated when people dismiss the product of my careful investigation and thought into this matter as "oh, he just wholesale copied OS X". Because it ignores the fact that I really tried to come up with a better solution.
In the end I couldn't, and it seems nobody else has either.
I will say though, I did really try to innovate on the technical side. And in that sense, I think I succeeded. You can see that in some of Switchboard's finer points, such as exposing APIs to the settings panes (which are called Switchboard "plugs") which allow them to actually interact with Switchboard's internal UI, providing, among other things, progress bar support in the title bar.
I wrote an article for the elementary Journal announcing Switchboard here: http://elementaryos.org/journal/attack-settings
And I put together a quick presentation highlighting Switchboard's vision and architecture here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF37THZoNsA | https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0Aah2wnTpXrZAZGRuaDI...
Hopefully, you can see that we did not just "senselessly copy" anything.
