Comments on: GNOME stole stuff from Mac OS X

By: Fabian Rodriguez

Fabian Rodriguez — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 23:32:52 +0000

Uh. Perhaps check where the Mac took its own interface before writing your next post.

By: Vadim P.

Vadim P. — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:39:45 +0000

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.

By: xxuriahxx

xxuriahxx — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:02:20 +0000

So your post (this post) would be considered snobbish at all right?

By: Niel

Niel — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 07:12:13 +0000

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.

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 20:25:51 +0000

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.

By: Asa

Asa — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 17:32:06 +0000

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.

By: David

David — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 17:26:37 +0000

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.

By: Carl van Tonder

Carl van Tonder — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 07:46:57 +0000

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.

By: Hans Rødtang

Hans Rødtang — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:02:42 +0000

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.

By: Derek Buranen

Derek Buranen — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:46:34 +0000

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.