[aneth]

Isn't PadMapper just a ripoff of http://www.housingmaps.com/, which was the first of its kind?

I developed http://www.cribq.com because at the time, both PadMapper (if it existed, can't remember - according to domain records padmapper.com was registered after CribQ launched) and HousingMaps were too simplistic and behind on listings to use. HousingMaps had no organizational tools - so I suppose PadMapper "ripped" that idea off of me? (CribQ website is not actively developed anymore, but the iPhone app is quite popular.)

Seriously, why does this accusation come up every time someone launches a site with housing listings on a map? Even if the site is similar, there is no shame in "ripping off" ideas - you will always do something different and hopefully better or useful in some way. If you manage to copy an idea and survive, you've either done a better job marketing or a better job building a product for some segment. Either way, we all win.

Developing a site that is an improvement, different take, or even a copy of another is not a ripoff. Is AirBNB a ripoff of VRBO? Is Google a ripoff of AltaVista? Is Gmail a ripoff of HotMail? Is TechStars a ripoff of YC? Facebook a ripoff of Friendster? You may not agree with their tactics in some cases, but generally the founders/creators have a vision that differs from the site they "ripped off" and have a reason for creating their own version. And would somebody PLEASE rip off Craigslist and win?

Copy away. Or as Steve Jobs says, "good artists copy, great artists steal."

[ericd]

It depends on how similar the implementation is. If someone clones all or most of another site's design decisions, I'd say that's not cool and is worthy of derision. There are sites that I would consider clones of PadMapper because they try to do things the same way without adding much new or providing a new take on the problem. That says to me that they didn't have much of a vision, and it's annoying - it seems unlikely that if they were re-deriving solutions to those problems that they'd come up with the same answers for everything.

For an example, see how different the results of our both tackling the same problems were - they barely resemble each other in form or functionality.

But yeah, the basic idea of showing real estate on a map is old, I have a research papers from the 80s that talks about making map-based search systems for real estate. housingmaps is the earliest web-based implementation of the idea that I know of, though, and was my inspiration.

[aneth]

I certainly don't think it's anyone's place to judge something as a "ripoff" versus "inspired." That is in the heart of the creator. And I think it's ridiculous to judge something on such an extreme binary scale - as either a soul-less copy or an inspired innovation.

Look at Android - it's a "ripoff" of iPhone, and copied much of the design and function. Except it's entirely different. It has created a new, more open and more dangerous ecosystem for applications. It has made iPhone-like functionality available to different markets and fulfilled different requirements. It has lighted the fire of competition under Apple.

While it may annoy you to have "copies" out there, I can guarantee you there was a reason those copies were developed. Nobody spends their hours reproducing existing functionally without some idea of how they will be better in product or distribution, regardless of their ultimate success. They may have been inspired by your work, but almost certainly they saw a need for something better in some way.

[ericd]

That last part is patently false. Many clones of software projects are developed entirely to get a piece of that other project's pie without any thought to being better, in the same way that Louis Vuitton counterfeits exist solely to capitalize on the design and brand cachet of the real thing.