[ericskiff]

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?

[danlec]

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

[wpietri]

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.

[danlec]

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)

[krschultz]

And now they were just DMCA'ed, rightfully so in my opinion.

If you believe in open source, then you need to be respectful of copyright law. It is the foundation for open source licensing.

[icebraining]

If you believe in open source, then you need to be respectful of copyright law. It is the foundation for open source licensing.

I don't see how that follows. I support open source, that is, the free distribution of software code. Open source licensing is just a necessary evil to account for the fact that copyright is anti-open-source by default. A few decades back, when the US and other countries required registration to copyright works, open source licensing would have been a ridiculous suggestion (except for copyleft licenses), even though open source itself would still make perfect sense.

[pb2au]

It depends on your meaning behind "free distribution", but arguably most open source licenses don't exist to provide that specifically -- they exist to permit it while abiding by the other conditions on the license.

For example, if you don't respect copyright law, you wouldn't be able to argue that a corporation taking GPLed code and incorporating it into a proprietary product is immoral nor taking BSD licensed code and removing a link back to the original author is immoral.

[icebraining]

For example, if you don't respect copyright law, you wouldn't be able to argue that a corporation taking GPLed code and incorporating it into a proprietary product is immoral nor taking BSD licensed code and removing a link back to the original author is immoral.

No, I just can't argue that on the grounds that people should have a right to prevent others from copying their work. I can still defend it without incoherence on other grounds. Just because in some jurisdictions you have to use copyright to defend those rights, that doesn't make those rights dependent on accepting copyright.

For example, here in civil law countries, there's commonly no "copyright" as such; there's Moral Rights (which protect stuff like attribution) and Economic Rights. Therefore, there's no implication that abolishing Economic Rights like restricting others from copying must also abolish attribution rights.

Essentially, the attribution right is the goal, and copyright is just a method that can be used to achieve that goal. There's no incoherence in defending the goal without supporting this method of achieving it.

And that applies to the GPL as well - I can defend the right to prevent others from using your code in closed binaries, without having to defend the wider right of prevent any copying at all. (Though in my particular case, I wouldn't mind losing copyleft if copyright was to be abolished)

[wpietri]

Indeed. Here's them acknowledging that:

https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/issues/92#issuecomm...

[huhtenberg]

Even setting aside the legality of this rip, doesn't the ethical aspects of it bother anyone as well?

Designing a simple and functional UI is really hard. It takes ages to sift through possible options, discard the fluff, iterate over the details and while the end result is endearingly simple, it ends up fronting a shitload of sweat and tears. And then someone just waltzes in waving their Libre flag and the middle finger to lift the whole thing just as if it's a no big deal. I don't know about you, but this really pisses me off. This is as disrespectful as it gets towards people who did the original work and it also reflects really poorly on the O/S in general.

[mindcrime]

"Good artists borrow, great artists steal".

That said, yeah, I have a problem with stealing actual source code, even if it is "just" CSS and HTML or whatever. But as far as cribbing the "look and feel" stuff, I personally don't have a problem with it. And to the extent that I know anything about the legal aspects, I thought there was some old case involving Lotus or Adobe or somebody, that established that copying "look and feel" is legal?

Edit: Here's more on the legal aspect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_and_feel#Lawsuits_over

[markdown]

If you want to see a completely original UI with not a single thing "borrowed" from elsewhere, my 5yr old has some drawings to show you.

This specific case takes it too far, there's no doubt about that. But you can be sure that the Trello designer was heavily influenced by those that came before him. UI designers spend half their time looking at UI's designed by others to see what works and what doesn't.

In fact, more often than not, UI design should be copied. You don't design a completely different light switch just because you want to be original. Function before form.

[huhtenberg]

Of course the cross-pollination is required. But this LibreTrello thing is a blatant rip - the look and feel, the semantics and interaction flows, all the details. Everything, to the dot.

It's still would've been not a big deal if it were just a temporary placeholder design and it got released to the public accidentally. Gotta start somewhere, that's understandable. But they act entitled to what they did. This is what the problem is. They don't recognize or acknowledge all the work that Trello devs did to get things where they are. And they did a lot of it, which is plainly obvious from the fact that there was no other Trello before them.

[streptomycin]

That doesn't bother me. You could make a similar argument about some aspect of nearly every piece of open source software. Web design isn't special. What about C# vs Mono, Matlab vs Octave, Unix vs GNU/Linux, etc.?

(Just to be clear... directly copying assets and code is not cool.)

[r3bl]

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...

[weego]

I also believe that it's not in Trello Inc. interest to try to censure us because of the Streisand effect, and it would be overly complex

What a thoroughly loathsome and naive attitude to have.

[cheald]

"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.

[pb2au]

Also in a previous comment by the author, before the DMCA:

I also believe that it's not in Trello Inc. interest to try to censure us because of the Streisand effect, and it would be overly complex (I live in France, Yaşar lives in Turkey, we don't have a common company or an organization, and in fact we never met each other in the real life), and even if they stop us, and because the code is distributed under the MIT license some other will take the relay (remember PopCornTime anyone?).

That, combined the author posting it to on HN several hours after getting the DMCA, makes it clear that the author does not care about blatantly ripping off and redistributing others' work. Regardless of whatever their proposed solution would be for correcting the infringement, I doubt this project will ever be safe to use under assumption of an open source license.

[franciscop]

I completely agree. I think they're looking for trouble, they crossed that line between "for fun" and "messing with a great website".

[silverlight]

It's one thing to have two ways of doing kanban boards, but there is definitely very much a "look and feel" copying going on here that I'm not sure is legal.

[wpietri]

I'd love to hear from somebody who knows better, but my understanding is that the legal aspects of look-and-feel ripoffs have never been settled in court.

In one sense, that doesn't matter. Trello has way more time and money, so I'm sure they can sue the LibreBoard people with enough vigor that the LibreBoard folks will decide it's much easier to come up with their own look. Whether or not LibreBoard could eventually win the suit is irrelevant if they can't afford to go the distance in court.

Of course, it probably doesn't look great for Trello to sue a couple of random dudes, so I could see them letting it go. Or perhaps just calling them up and talking developer-to-developer about how this makes them feel as creators and asking LibreBoard to do their own work.

[ChuckMcM]

Actually they were litigated as part of the Lotus v. Borland suit which a distant cousin of mine (same name, common ancestor is like 4 generations back) was involved in, I sometimes get inquiries)

[1] http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/int-p...

[yellowapple]

From what I can tell, they're working on a differentiated (improved, even) UI/L&F [0]. A lot of the concepts (including the one they seem to be working with) are based on mockups for improved versions of Trello's UI that were rejected by Trello, and it's apparent that non-Trello kanban software is being referenced as well.

[0]: https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/issues/94

[ljk]

Not an expert here, but isn't that how the task-managing board should look like? The first time I saw Trello I thought it looked very similar to the JIRA Agile boards by Atlassian....