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by gitaarik 4172 days ago
I like it. I'm using Trello now, but the interface doesn't work that convenient on mobile I think. So I was thinking to make a client of my own using the Trello API, but this way I can change the original interface to my likings, and hopefully other's likings, so it gets merged :).

EDIT: A lot of people seem to think it looks to much like Trello. While I agree that the interface looks strikingly similar (or maybe even just exactly the same), I think the intentions are not to evil. How can libre software have evil intentions? Of course it can, but since it's libre and everybody can read and change the sourcecode, it likely won't happen.

And, in the end, isn't that why we have libre software at all? We want to have control over the software, instead of the software having control over us, right?

3 comments

If your "independent" clone is hot linking assets from the original, you probably have less control than you think. Ironically, Trello probably knows (or could learn) the IP of every person to use this.
As far as I can tell, they're not actually hotlinking anything - they just copied it once into their repo. Did I miss something?
The copied css has references to image URLs in it.
Oh, I see it now. I was searching for trello.com, but they're using images that come from cloudfront.
Yes, you missed this commit. Where they copied across CSS from Trello, including image URLs.

https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/blob/348081d9eca451...

> While I agree that the interface looks strikingly similar (or maybe even just exactly the same), I think the intentions are not to evil. How can libre software have evil intentions?

It is not evil, it just stupid. Lots of effort now is wasted because they made the stupid mistake to use illegitimate assets. And of course stupidity does not absolve responsibility.

> And, in the end, isn't that why we have libre software at all? We want to have control over the software, instead of the software having control over us, right?

That is exactly why it is so important to do these sorts of things by the book. By crossing the line authors of this project gave away large chunk of the control they (and us by extension) had.

> How can libre software have evil intentions?

This might not be a particularly nuanced view, but I'm totally fine with non-libre software being used to make a profit, if there's a market for it and there isn't some kind of extortionary force at work. Taking the code and "liberating" it could be considered nefarious because it directly undermines a company's ability to profit off of intellectual property that is entirely theirs.