[mherrmann]

Marta was inspired by (my) https://fman.io [1]. Marta's author criticises that fman doesn't feel native enough because it is also available for Windows and Linux. (It's based on PyQt.) What you get in return however are a more vibrant community and plugin ecosystem in Python.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13921631

[SyneRyder]

Also from Marta's author in that thread:

"The development of Marta started the long before I knew about fman, so it's not any kind of imitation."

"I don't think we are the direct competitors. fman is a completely another project with its own strong and weak points. I tried fman and didn't like it because of numerous reasons, but it's my own opinion."

Two column file manager interfaces have been around for a long time, fman certainly didn't invent it. Marta seems to draw more influence from Midnight Commander / Norton Commander, with the function key reminders at the bottom of the window. The breadcrumbs and tabs in Marta remind me more of Panic's Transmit, and those UI elements aren't in fman. There's elements of the standard Mac finder in there. It is definitely not a clone of fman.

I think that was a really unfair comment, designed to get traffic to a competing product.

[mherrmann]

Also from that thread:

> This is eerily similar to fman

> I was about to ask if this was some form of re-release

So it's not just me who thinks the similarities are uncanny.

[yanex]

Marta is not inspired by fman. The Action panel (I think it's called a Command palette in fman) is likely to be the only common thing between our products – and we both took it from Sublime Text. But it's not really important.

The "doesn't feel native" is not the main problem for me. I use a number of non-native apps (such as IJ IDEA) – and I'm okay with it.

fman is a just slow app without features. It was ok if it was in alpha stages, but why it is a paid product then? Come on, there's still no way to cancel the copy process! And you need to install a third-party plugin to swap panes. I wonder how you made such a small progress since the last year, considering that you work on fman full-time.

[mherrmann]

You're focused on "features". Given your limited time, that makes sense. But a successful project requires more. I have been working on many things that are less visible (besides the fact that I'm supporting three times as many platforms). This affects things like the number of plugins contributed by users (fman has 10x those of Marta). Or the activity on the issue tracker (compare fman's [1] with Marta's [2], where - except for the past 24 hours - virtually all issues are by you). You're right that fman can improve in terms of features and speed. It will. But those things are just the tip of the iceberg.

[1]: https://github.com/fman-users/fman/issues

[2]: https://github.com/marta-file-manager/marta-issues/issues

[yanex]

I was going to post the detailed answer to your message, but I realized it won't make any sense.

I won't argue with you. I only say that envy is bad for your health.

[Ice_cream_suit]

Your fman was the package that surreptitiously ran update daily as root.

I cannot imagine that any security conscious Linux user would willingly use it

* This was a consequence of it's Windows heritage.

[mherrmann]

This was fixed one year ago, within two days of being reported. I was new to Linux at the time and didn't know better [1].

[1]: https://fman.io/blog/an-apology-to-linux-users/