Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: LibreBoard – An open-source clone of Trello

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 107 posts

Re: Show HN: LibreBoard – An open-source clone of Trello

#21

Post by austenallred »

I love the idea of open source tools, but this goes way too far. This isn't just rebuilding a popular concept, this is taking code that was written by a for-profit company and blatantly stealing it. There's an important difference.

The earlier versions of this repo still used the Trello logo. Trello's CSS is blatantly used, even using trellicons, the custom icon font created by Trello. The entire front-end is completely, blatantly stolen.

If you want to build LibreOffice as a free alternative to Microsoft Word, that's great. But taking Microsoft Word's code and uploading it into an open source GitHub repository? That crosses the line. I don't care what legal ramifications there are or what constitutes copyright infringement or what is legally actionable (heaven knows the law is often off base from what is right/moral/ethical, especially in software). That's another discussion, but this is messed up.

Can you create a task management system in Meteor.js that is inspired by "agile" methodology and similar to Trello? Sure. But blatantly taking code, especially without even putting a creative spin of your own on it, is just plain wrong.

Re: Show HN: LibreBoard – An open-source clone of Trello

#22

Post by gitaarik »

I like it. I'm using Trello now, but the interface doesn't work that convenient on mobile I think. So I was thinking to make a client of my own using the Trello API, but this way I can change the original interface to my likings, and hopefully other's likings, so it gets merged :).

EDIT: A lot of people seem to think it looks to much like Trello. While I agree that the interface looks strikingly similar (or maybe even just exactly the same), I think the intentions are not to evil. How can libre software have evil intentions? Of course it can, but since it's libre and everybody can read and change the sourcecode, it likely won't happen.

And, in the end, isn't that why we have libre software at all? We want to have control over the software, instead of the software having control over us, right?

Re: Show HN: LibreBoard – An open-source clone of Trello

#23

Post by danlec »

wpietri wrote: post #13
danlec wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/commit/348081d9eca4... , where they check a beautified version of Trello's CSS file into their MIT licensed project.

Great find. If that's as bad as it sounds, that could make an it an illegal derivative work, which would make for an easy DMCA claim.

Yeah… https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/blob/master/client/... is the styling for a Trello easter egg (they're hotlinking the images off of Trello's cloudfront servers)

Re: Show HN: LibreBoard – An open-source clone of Trello

#24

Post by [deleted] »

austenallred wrote: post #21

I love the idea of open source tools, but this goes way too far. This isn't just rebuilding a popular concept, this is taking code that was written by a for-profit company and blatantly stealing it. There's an important difference. The earlier versions of this repo still used the Trello logo. Trello's CSS is blatantly used, even using trellicons, the custom icon font created by Trello. The entire front-end is complet…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: LibreBoard – An open-source clone of Trello

#25

Post by tghw »

thirdtruck wrote: post #11
pxlpshr wrote: post #5

I don't endorse a blatant rip off of the UI and the assets. You can do better than that. Otherwise, good job on the development effort and open source initiative.

It is a blatant imitation[1]. At the same time, the design is incredibly refined, so there's only so much room to move away from without making sacrifices solely for the sake of differentiation. EDIT: [1] According to a comment below, it's a straight-up copy of the CSS. That goes well beyond "blatant imitation."

Imitation is different than directly copying the CSS. They copied the CSS.

Re: Show HN: LibreBoard – An open-source clone of Trello

#28

Post by Globz »

Wow...this looks like a clone of Trello, sorry I cannot support this.

I have been using Trello for a long time and I refuse to give credits to someone who blatantly stole the assets, code, etc. and didn't even care to AT LEAST add a different touch to the project. I love open source but this project is off the limit concerning copyrights.

Re: Show HN: LibreBoard – An open-source clone of Trello

#29

Post by cheald »

r3bl wrote: post #8
ericskiff wrote: post #2

While I love the idea of an open source tool that explores the same problems that Trello does and potentially even solves it in a very similar way, I have to admit that the exact look and feel being copied here seems like a blatant rip off. Am I off base? Can anyone speak to the copyright aspect of copying a solution and design so fully?

There is a discussion started in a GitHub issue about this. I must suggest you a comment by the project's co-owner: https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/issues/92#issuecomm... He went a little too far in his argument, but he does make a good point. EDIT : They've received a DMCA takedown notice from GitHub: https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/issues/92#issuecomm...

"In the meantime, please clone the repository on your local computer so we can have a lot of copies of it."

Wow. That's uh. Something.

Post reply on HN