I love the idea of open source tools, but this goes way too far. This isn't just rebuilding a popular concept, this is taking code that was written by a for-profit company and blatantly stealing it. There's an important difference.
The earlier versions of this repo still used the Trello logo. Trello's CSS is blatantly used, even using trellicons, the custom icon font created by Trello. The entire front-end is completely, blatantly stolen.
If you want to build LibreOffice as a free alternative to Microsoft Word, that's great. But taking Microsoft Word's code and uploading it into an open source GitHub repository? That crosses the line. I don't care what legal ramifications there are or what constitutes copyright infringement or what is legally actionable (heaven knows the law is often off base from what is right/moral/ethical, especially in software). That's another discussion, but this is messed up.
Can you create a task management system in Meteor.js that is inspired by "agile" methodology and similar to Trello? Sure. But blatantly taking code, especially without even putting a creative spin of your own on it, is just plain wrong.
I'm on the fence on this one - I could argue either way (I could probably work a books worth of material).
However, I think it is interesting to note that the idea of "stealing" a design has been done for years. I just don't think many people do it to websites.
Examples - there are companies that bundle premade controls that look pretty darn close to the designs in paid software. Here is an example of one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYzjJHtldec
They may just wrap Windows API - but I've seen ribbon interfaces running on Windows 2K with VB6.
Even if one would argue that falls into "fair use" - consider two more examples:
Zelda Classic[1] - they used original artwork from the original Nintendo game and re-created the game on the PC
Mari0[2] - the original Mario but with portals (including level design and graphics)
Now from what I can tell - Nintendo doesn't shutdown/care about these people because they aren't making money off the games. But if these games aren't infringing on Nintendo's copyright - I don't know what would be.
There are lots of semi-related issues raised in your post.
Generally copying/cloning a design is legally OK, but copying the implementation/execution of that design is not OK. This is well demonstrated in the font industry. You can copy a typeface as long as you do it "cleanly" (ie by not reverse engineering the font files), which is why there are lots of cheap copies of common fonts. This is probably the most relevant aspect for this project. They can copy the look'n'feel of Trello as perfectly as they can, but they can not copy Trello assets, CSS etc.
Then there is the Ribbon. Being software Microsoft has it patented which makes clones of Ribbon more in the gray area. On the other hand the enforceability of such patents is somewhat questionable.
Lastly the games. In addition to copyright infringement I suspect there is also risk of trademark infringement. What makes trademarks interesting that they are thought to need enforcing to remain valid, so companies generally are less willing to a blind eye to tm infringements. Also unlike copyright which considers where the work comes from, trademarks generally consider only what the work looks like and if it can be confused to the original trademark.
I think it's interesting to point that out that the source is still available (on github no less) - I think Nintendo was unhappy because they were collecting donations (at least one of the comments mention this). The projects I mention don't appear to even have a paypal donate button.
Honestly, I have a feeling that Nintendo has talked to the authors of Zelda Classic and Mari0 at some point and made sure they understood where the line was drawn.
> I just don't think many people do it to websites.
The now dead "pirate sites" had galleries of comparisons between an original site and a rip-off of that site. Some of them were blatant, even hot-linking assets. (A weirdly risky strategy with goatse potential).
Hmm. I've spent some time making my own Trello clone but mine has changed a little more than the one in the OP. First of all, mine is called Trellu. Check it out and let me know your thoughts:
If the authors have genuinely copied CSS and icons (I haven't checked) then I would expect Trello Inc. to pursue the authors for copyright infringement (justifiably).
The point is to be very precise with the criticism. Is the work stolen (protected by copyright law) or is it just a convincing clone?
There's nothing wrong with making something that looks very similar to Trello, though there is something wrong with using their CSS and icons. Why does it need to be a "creative spin"? The UI works well, so copy it (by writing your own implementation, of course).
I want to agree with this sentiment, but after watching how gamedev has progressed in the mobile space, I can't find a good argument against this. Straight up cloning has become common practice in today's industry (assets are switched but with striking similarity to the original), yet I don't see as many people frowning on this practice anymore. At least outside of tech circles.
So yeah, to those of us who understand what goes into development, cloning is ethically reprehensible. But once you step outside of the tech world, I believe the ethics of this become much more murky.
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?
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.
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.
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)
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
You're correct that moral and property rights are distinct in many civil law countries, but both are under the umbrella of copyright and, as far as I know, there are no countries that enforce moral rights but not property rights. I'm aware that there are countries that do the reverse: acknowledge property rights but not moral rights. Which countries' legal systems do you have in mind?
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)
According to the idea that we should not respect property rights (and, like you say, only respect attribution / moral rights), this would allow the company to re-license GPL code under an MIT license, then use the newly MIT-licensed code in ways that were unintended according to the original author (i.e. inclusion in non-GPLed code). Like you mention, this could be in the form of closed-source binaries, which of course could be reverse engineered legally, because of no property rights, but, really, this system seems terrible to me.
While I love open source software and acknowledge that copyright can be abused, I can't see the benefit of a system that permits you to take the work of someone else, ignoring their conditions, then modify and re-distribute it as if it were under something similar to an MIT license -- respecting only attribution.
You're correct that moral and property rights are distinct in many civil law countries, but both are under the umbrella of copyright
No. Copyright can be used to protect moral rights, since you can't mis-attribute something you can't copy, but that's only done so in the US because there's no federal law defining moral rights. In places where moral rights are in the law, they are not subject to copyright at all. You can even sell or forfeit the copyright, and you'll still have the attribution rights (which are inalienable).
as far as I know, there are no countries that enforce moral rights but not property rights. (...) Which countries' legal systems do you have in mind?
It doesn't matter. My point was that attribution and other moral rights don't rely on accepting copyright. Whether there are legal systems without copyright is irrelevant to this.
According to the idea that we should not respect property rights (and, like you say, only respect attribution / moral rights), this would allow the company to re-license GPL code under an MIT license, then use the newly MIT-licensed code in ways that were unintended according to the original author (i.e. inclusion in non-GPLed code).
What licenses would those be, if there's no copyright? You're still thinking in a matter formatted by the current US law.
Just because in this hypothetical world copyright has been abolished, doesn't mean you necessarily can do what you suggest. As I said earlier, a law could be promulgated that granted the author the right only to prevent others from using code written by him in proprietary binaries - while not granting him/her the right to restrict any other copying.
My only point is that you don't have to accept & respect copyright - the right to prevent others from almost any copying - to defend other rights. They aren't dependent on copyright; that just happens to be, under current US law, the best way to protect them.
No. Copyright can be used to protect moral rights, [...]. In places where moral rights are in the law, they are not subject to copyright at all.
It doesn't matter. [...] Whether there are legal systems without copyright is irrelevant to this.
Sorry, I think we are just disagreeing on the definition of copyright here. I use the definition that moral rights are under the umbrella of copyright. For example, Wikipedia defines moral rights as "rights of creators of copyrighted works generally recognized in civil law jurisdictions and, to a lesser extent, in some common law jurisdictions" [1]. You could have moral rights without property rights, but not without copyright. And, again, I don't think there are any countries that actually have moral rights without property rights, which I do consider important for discussing the claim that respecting property rights is unnecessary.
What licenses would those be, if there's no copyright? You're still thinking in a matter formatted by the current US law.
You claimed that moral rights were important, but property rights were not (or maybe I've misunderstood). The MIT license is generally protective of moral rights (attribution), while the GPL protects both moral rights and property rights (attribution and "you may use the code under these conditions"). By saying moral rights are only important, it's the same as saying any GPL code could be re-licensed under the MIT license. So the situation I mentioned was using previously GPLed code in a closed-source binary, because the company does not respect the copyright (property rights) of the author, even if they keep the attribution (moral rights).
The original topic discussed was: "If you believe in open source, then you need to be respectful of copyright law. It is the foundation for open source licensing."
Which I think is made clear by the example. By nobody respecting property rights, closed-source binaries could use GPLed code, with the stipulation that the binaries themselves can be reverse engineered legally. It isn't a good trade-off. The binaries are no longer proprietary (i.e. have ownership rights), but are still very hard to use.
As I said earlier, a law could be promulgated that granted the author the right only to prevent others from using code written by him in proprietary binaries - while not granting him/her the right to restrict any other copying.
This itself sounds like a copyright law that grants certain property rights to the author. Earlier you mentioned abolishing "economic rights" and stated "essentially, the attribution right is the goal". But, as it turns out, some property rights are liked ("I made this, so I want to release it under X condition!"), so if you expect others to respect your terms, it is important to respect theirs, imo.
That's why I consider respecting copyright to be important for open source -- to me it seems like the "golden rule" of authoring code; if I want my GPL code to be protected, I should respect the license of their proprietary code.
I don't have any more time for the discussion, but I think I've expressed my view the best I can.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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....
Wow...this looks like a clone of Trello, sorry I cannot support this.
I have been using Trello for a long time and I refuse to give credits to someone who blatantly stole the assets, code, etc. and didn't even care to AT LEAST add a different touch to the project. I love open source but this project is off the limit concerning copyrights.
What code did they steal, exactly? They re-implemented all of the functionality, and I'm not sure they took take the JS either. So at this point, it leaves CSS + Look&Feel, and I think they took some icons, though that seems like more of an oversight as it's still a young project from the looks of it.
I don't see this as any different to such works as OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe) and CorsixTH (Theme Hospital). Both open-source remakes of the popular closed-source games. Obviously they don't bundle the media (graphics, etc), and just ask end-installers to point to the installation files of the originals. You could argue that hot-linking css is quite similar to that, though not exactly.
The real problem is them putting this not-yet-sanitized-of-all-copyright-infringment onto a public-facing site with a domain and everything. If it was still on Github, then that's fine. But they jumped the bandwagon a little too soon, and people are escalating it incredibly quickly.
The CSS is distributed in the Github repo, ostensibly under an open-source license, which the project maintainer has no right to use, distribute, or relicense. It's about as clear a case of copyright infringement as they come.
(And that's not even mentioning that reusing someone else's CSS likely requires you to reuse their markup, too.)
"Yaşar received an email from Trello, Inc. asking him to rename the Metrello project. Do you have any idea for a new name?" [1]
Apparently it was even called *trello a few weeks ago, so they are definitely aware of that project already. Curious why it wasn't DMCA'ed earlier already.
I don't endorse a blatant rip off of the UI and the assets. You can do better than that. Otherwise, good job on the development effort and open source initiative.
It is a blatant imitation[1]. At the same time, the design is incredibly refined, so there's only so much room to move away from without making sacrifices solely for the sake of differentiation.
EDIT: [1] According to a comment below, it's a straight-up copy of the CSS. That goes well beyond "blatant imitation."
Which is totally fine for development purposes (prototype) and work in progress mockups. But they should have changed it before putting it on a public-facing .com domain.
I'm going to suggest that it's not even good for prototype work, because it invalidates any claim to clean-room implementation and makes it very easy to cross the line between original work and ripoff.
I think if this had been actually clean-room reverse-engineered, it wouldn't be getting the backlash it's getting.
The fact that the LibreBoard devs outright ripped off Trello's CSS and HTML is a bit disappointing. Perhaps with the DMCA notice they got, they'll consider scrapping the current UI and coming up with something a bit more, you know, not blatantly copy-pasted.
That said, being able to use something reasonably-Trello-like for internal use (with data under the control of the entity using it) is a fantastic idea, and the fact that LibreBoard does that reasonably well (from what I can tell) gives me some hope that they'll manage to pull themselves out of this muck.
It's so sad that such great work can bring so many negative repercussions just because the project creator's decided to blatantly rip off Trello's assets.
The project would be under such a different light had they decided style it themselves... I think they're so much better than this.
Some time ago I made Youfle[1]. I was trying to make a Trello clone, but for structured data, like a direct interface to a document database that could be used (and/or extended) by not-so-simple but yet data management contexts. The idea was to make something versatile like a spreadsheet and yet powerful as a database. The design resembles Trello (and, differently from Libreboard, it has card drag-and-drop and horizontal scrolling with click-and-drag capabilities). It works offline and saves data to PouchDB (IndexedDB on your browser, probably).
Documents should be written in YAML, but they also accept free text. The custom indexing, map and reduce functions, pagination, querying and other UI features were not implemented yet. To edit a card, double-click on its title. Adding the ID of other card as a value to any property of a card you create a link between the two, which you can see if you click on the body of the card after you stop editing.
If anyone has feedback to share about this, please let me know. The code is at GitHub[2].
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
It is a great example of a bigger open-source Meteor apps in a wild along-side with Telescope (http://www.telesc.pe/) which is also well documented and is extensible.
Been kinda building a trello-like app myself. But it's far more simplistic in features, and i'm trying to build it so it's way more mobile friendly. I have the front end as open source, and the web back end as closed. Not sure why I am doing it this way, but I hope to put out a proprietary iOS app for it at some point.
Wow. Just wow. Two years ago we had an internal row about people using Trello and possibly exposing internal data (which we attempted to solve through various means).
Having this as a Docker container is _great_ for in-house use (although I haven't checked the internals and am not very enthusiastic about their using Node...)
Well, apparently they reimplemented all the logic by their own, they just copied the visual from Trello, with a single CSS appropriation. They shouldn't have copied the CSS, but they can still "uncopy" it and write their own styles.
To the best of my knowledge, the people behind this project wrote code.
I don't know if it's a Bash script containing your one liner, though... But they seem to have their own code. (I don't think Trello's code is freely available).
Bear in mind, I'm not for or against. I'm just putting the thing in perspective and to be compared with what happened throughout History.
When I do Ctrl+K, Ctrl+T, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+Tab in Firefox or Chrome, they all have the same side effects.
It doesn't have to compete on just price. Trello is free (and I use it constantly), but using it still means having all of your data on remote servers. I can't use it at my job, for example, due to legitimate security concerns, but we could (in theory) use this new software instead.
We've got an application that is very similar to trello (www.iferapp.com) that we are planning to offer in self hosted mode - we are going into beta very soon.
Fantastic! Gotta love the people who salivate at the mouth with talks of litigation. Just tweak the UI and this product is a great alternative. Congratulations on your launch
I don't understand the ethical dilemma many of you are raising.
I've never believed there's such a thing as plagiarism of style, only things like algorithms and methodologies. If someone makes a wierd looking chair, and I like it and make my own, and they try to tell me I'm stealing their ideas they can fuck off, especially if I'm not selling this chair but just using it for myself and helping others build their own chairs, too.
Style sheets are within these same bounds as far as I care. They're not intellectual property or content. There's nothing profound about aesthetics. No hard work in refining it. It's something that's composed entirely of intuition and trying to copyright that seems immoral to me. CSS is dressing, not content, and dressing is the only thing they have stolen from trello.
The case for infringement would be very weak to non-existent if they recreated the look and feel writing the CSS themselves from scratch. The issue is they took the original product and modified some spacing and other minor details and redistributed it. Any written work like this is copyrightable.
Quickly reading through the code, it looks like the frontend is the bulk of the code. Which makes sense: Trello is really a pretty simple app; the UI experience is where the real magic is.
The earlier versions of this repo still used the Trello logo. Trello's CSS is blatantly used, even using trellicons, the custom icon font created by Trello. The entire front-end is completely, blatantly stolen.
If you want to build LibreOffice as a free alternative to Microsoft Word, that's great. But taking Microsoft Word's code and uploading it into an open source GitHub repository? That crosses the line. I don't care what legal ramifications there are or what constitutes copyright infringement or what is legally actionable (heaven knows the law is often off base from what is right/moral/ethical, especially in software). That's another discussion, but this is messed up.
Can you create a task management system in Meteor.js that is inspired by "agile" methodology and similar to Trello? Sure. But blatantly taking code, especially without even putting a creative spin of your own on it, is just plain wrong.