GNOME stole stuff from Mac OS X
I changed my job a couple of weeks ago and now I’m working on a Mac. As I previously had a PC with Ubuntu 8.04 installed, I always thought that the Mac guys were snobs, who tend to avoid other persons and make their own clique. This is not true as I recently found out. Actually, I can say that the GNOME guys should’ve thought better when they copied some parts from OS X and called them innovative works.
For example, you know the small bar that’s present in Nautilus when you go to the trash can, right? The same bar is there on Mac too. Still talking about the visual side, we can find the mac-ish progress bar/status style in GNOME too.
I really hate the following way of thinking: “It’s BAD when Apple and Microsoft take stuff from open source project, but it’s GOOD when we take from them!” Open up your eyes guys and try to make something original if you want to compete with these two giants! And I’m looking especially at you Mark Shuttleworth!
posted: 08 August 8
under: Ubuntu
Huh? Is this some kind of joke?
The GNOME designers explicitly pulled a lot of features from MacOS. Indeed, many of the early Nautilus developers were former Apple employees.
you’re wrong.
Firstly with ideas everyone benefits as ideas are shared, as everyone gets the goodness of being able to use them. Of course innovative ideas are what will push linux ahead. But if there is a good idea, lets copy it. This will make linux better, so will make linux users happier.
It will also encourage other companies to innovate more to compete with linux which is now the same as it, meaning those users get better features. everyone wins. It is better than leaving apple with a feature and not copying it (if it is great) as then apple has no incentive to innovate futher.
Realizing that, there is another element. It IS better when open source guys copy ideas than close source guys. This is because people get the idea, and the associated freedom with it, and the quick and easy learning to see how that idea was programmed.
linux should try to get as good as possible, innovation is one part, using obviously good ideas is another
You’re putting this on SABDFL Shuttleworth? Seems to me that open source is so much bigger than him.
I’m looking at you. Post ideas to launchpad. Report bugs. Encourage others to join in.
Many open source contributors > Steve Jobs.
Without people copying and modifying ideas the world would be a pretty lame place. Copying is cool as long as you dont claim you came up with it.
I have never heard anyone claim that the bar in the Trash folder in nautilus was a GNOME original feature; my guess is that you just assumed it was because it isn’t there on Windows and are now bitter because it was inspired by something.
But why? Why does everything need to be “original”? What’s *wrong* with the bar in the Trash folder; I quite like it! As long as nobody’s claiming that Linux did it first, I’m happy for GNU/Linux developers to give us the best solution available, regardless of whether someone else “did” it first.
That said, some projects (like openoffice) are seriously harmed by their attempt to clone another program, but do so because that’s what users want. If users realised that there is no usecase ever for writing something in Word then Openoffice would be a hell of a lot better.
Carl.
Personally, I don’t care who “steals” from who — so long as it’s a good interface idea and well implemented, the users benefit. If every interface had to be completely original, no one would be able to get anything done because they would be spending all their time learning new interfaces.
Where did it say the bar that said “trash” is original? I think it looks alot like the information bar from Firefox, which IE adopted, and now apparently Nautilus has adopted.
btw, I completely agree with your point if they claim its original.
What are you talking about on the progress bar and status style (what is “status style”?? I’ve never heard of it)? Are you just referring to some theme you saw that you think is similar? Because I’m pretty sure progress bars have been around for a very, very long time, and their “style” is wholly dependent upon your theme.
Let me start with this first: thank you for the comments. This is the part I like about the open source community. But I hate fan boys who call me a fagg or something like that. I received such a comment which ended up as spam, and that was the only one which had this fate. Anyway let’s begin:
@Mackenzie: I’m talking about the style of the progress window when you copy/move something (also I use “/” for “or”, I’m sorry if I created some sort of confussion, English is not my native language). And I’m not talking about themability here, I’m talking about the indicators and the way info is displayed in that small window.
@Asa: You are probably right, we can’t really know who had the idea first:)
@David: The thing is that operating systems are “borrowing” parts one from another and are trying to improve themselves with these fragments. We can’t say there are radical differences between current OSes, so the switch from one to the other is done quite easily.
I’m going to reply to the other comments in a different comment, to make things easier to read.
So your post (this post) would be considered snobbish at all right?
Yeah I think it is a joke, because it’s no big secret that everyone steals from everyone.
What matters is who managed to capitalize on it. Others can sit on the curbs and cry.
Uh. Perhaps check where the Mac took its own interface before writing your next post.