Microsoft rips off Plurk
blog.plurk.com
Microsoft rips off Plurk
1–10 of 141 posts
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#2Incredible, I guess in their culture this is ok (or has become so commonplace as to be ok), but shouldn't Microsoft have some sort of measures against it in their own workplaces?
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#3If you're going to worry about that you should have obfuscated your junk.
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#4If you're going to worry about that you should have obfuscated your junk.
You've got to be kidding me. And this justifies Microsoft, right?
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#5Being the co-founder and lead dev of Plurk I can tell you this sucks :-( But we are looking at our legal options, thought legal war with Microsoft and especially legal war at Microsoft in China would require a lot of resources.
I think this will become a major concern for all startups that are doing lots of client-side stuff. If people have determination they can copy your code (even if all your code is obfuscated, which Plurk's is). And I don't know what the solution is - other than stronger IP laws in emerging countries.
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#6Incredible, I guess in their culture this is ok (or has become so commonplace as to be ok), but shouldn't Microsoft have some sort of measures against it in their own workplaces?
My guess is the Chinese team was facing strict deadlines and in the act of desperation they ripped off the code and layout from Plurk. It's outrageous and MS needs to straight up get sued for this.
Plurk has a very small team of less than 10 guys and in my eyes this is nothing less than MS bullying. This is not right.
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#7Being the co-founder and lead dev of Plurk I can tell you this sucks :-( But we are looking at our legal options, thought legal war with Microsoft and especially legal war at Microsoft in China would require a lot of resources. I think this will become a major concern for all startups that are doing lots of client-side stuff. If people have determination they can copy your code (even if all your code is obfuscated, w…
You are clearly in the right. But a bit of advice: skip the whole look and feel issue* and stick to copyright infringement. Their code is exactly the same or highly derivative of Plurk code. This is pretty well-worn copyright territory, I don't think it would take much for Microsoft to back down.
* Apple sued Microsoft back in the day for stealing the look and feel of Mac OS, and failed. So that argument can be very hard to make.
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#8If you're going to worry about that you should have obfuscated your junk.
Read the article. They did.
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#9Incredible, I guess in their culture this is ok (or has become so commonplace as to be ok), but shouldn't Microsoft have some sort of measures against it in their own workplaces?
By "their culture' do you mean China, or Microsoft?
I really don't think for example Google China would do this.
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#10[deleted]