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Are this kind of full clones legal?

I understand that the server-side implementation is based on GitHub as a black box but I'm wondering about the blatant clone of the UI.



UI as far as I know is not copyrightable:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_v._Borland


Yet we have patents for rubber band scrolling :)

(someone posted a comment here about this scrolling patent but then removed, not sure why)


> Are this kind of full clones legal?

This is not a "full clone" but "something like GitHub" but for your own private server.

> I understand that the server-side implementation is based on GitHub as a black box

No, it's not. The serverside is implemented in Scala using a JGit as a GIT library for the files and H2 database for saving the metadata.


Thanks. Just to be clear, I appreciate the effort and do not say it was something illegal to do.

I was just wondering about theoretical consequences of cloning UI/tool of a successful company software with the reason of the tool/interface being too expensive.

If it's done for learning the technologies then it's "for educational purposes" and probably falls into another copyright use category that is more permissive.


> I was just wondering about theoretical consequences of cloning UI/tool of a successful company software with the reason of the tool/interface being too expensive.

The UI was not cloned either :). The UI is a Scalatra template (Twirl) and a Twitter Bootstrap style. It could be customized in any possible way and look the user would wish, but so far the developers are concentrating on the basic features.


> No, it's not. The serverside is implemented in Scala using a JGit as a GIT library for the files and H2 database for saving the metadata.

From a quick scan of the sources, H2 seems to be an hard-coded dependency. Do you have any plan on abstracting the Slick driver to allow others DB providers ?


> Do you have any plan on abstracting the Slick driver to allow others DB providers ?

I'm not the developer of the project, but database independence was not requested so far :). I suppose if users will ask it, it will be added. H2 suits however very well all the needs, it has a web based Admin UI that can be simply reused, and it's performance is fantastic: http://h2database.com/html/performance.html


Note that this is hosted on GitHub and not GitBucket. I made the mistake of thinking that the linked site was a running instance.




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