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HuddleChat Has Been Taken Down

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: HuddleChat Has Been Taken Down

#11

Post by ajkirwin »

subwindow wrote: post #7
jraines wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the complaining and their basically solid rationalization for it. http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/575-but-theres-only-so-ma... Although I'd still come back and say there's only so many ways to do chat . . .

That's not complaining about competition, that's complaining about theft of design. I really don't think they care if someone copies the functionality of one of their products, but I think they care when someone copies their words and design (CSS and images, in this case). Two completely different things.

I looked at the differences between the two and.. it's a layout and styling that I see everywhere.

Re: HuddleChat Has Been Taken Down

#12

Post by alex_c »

edw519 wrote: post #10

I don't understand the particulars of this case, but in general: There are 2 sets of hackers: those whose intellectual property has been stolen and those whose intellectual property will be stolen. The former group thinks it's a big deal. The latter group doesn't (yet).

I would suggest there's a third set, who sits around on Slashdot and argues that "intellectual property" is a misnomer and therefore cannot be "stolen".

Re: HuddleChat Has Been Taken Down

#13

Post by tfinniga »

Bummer. I tried huddlechat today, and was impressed. I hadn't tried campfire before, for various reasons, but I think I might give it a shot now.

At this point it might be just as effective of a tech demo to release the source to huddlechat, although the chances of it happening are quite low.

Re: HuddleChat Has Been Taken Down

#15

Post by pmorici »

edw519 wrote: post #10

I don't understand the particulars of this case, but in general: There are 2 sets of hackers: those whose intellectual property has been stolen and those whose intellectual property will be stolen. The former group thinks it's a big deal. The latter group doesn't (yet).

But in this case the "intellectual property" seems to be

1.chat in a web browser

2.web pages with a 2 column design.

Neither of which are unique or patentable ideas. Seems like 37signals just exploited this for publicity. Unless there was some innovation here that I'm missing.

Re: HuddleChat Has Been Taken Down

#17

Post by axod »

tfinniga wrote: post #13

Bummer. I tried huddlechat today, and was impressed. I hadn't tried campfire before, for various reasons, but I think I might give it a shot now. At this point it might be just as effective of a tech demo to release the source to huddlechat, although the chances of it happening are quite low.

Take a look at http://www.mibbit.com if you're interested in more of a feature-rich webchat.

Re: HuddleChat Has Been Taken Down

#18

Post by simplegeek »

Well, it's nice of Google that they've taken this down. But I'm really annoyed by 37signals' reply. I mean I recently developed the similar app to learn a particular framework so if I go market this product do you guys really think I should be taking this down if I see DHH or JF complaining how I ripped their app off? I mean a 100% similar app will cetainly be a dissaopinting effort (for both them and I) but I can always improve on that(improved/diff UI, new features and etc). Moreover, I can point anyone to couple of BaseCamp and Campfire clones and HuddleChat was just an example for app_engine (not a stupidly easy thing to implement like Basecamp and not a technicaly very challenging project). Just the right balance for a good tutorial. I was looking forward to read how did they do it using app_engine ;(
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