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Comment by spoondan | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a gross, misleading, and irresponsible reaction. The cited image is from the Mozilla wiki under a section entitled "Current mock-ups and screenshots". I cannot find any evidence that Mozilla has released a site or application with this UI. There is nothing anywhere to indicate that the design shown is "new", that it is in any way intended to be the final design, or that the stolen graphical elements will actually be used in the real product.

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Really? Because it looks to me like an employee of Mozilla claimed copyright on images plagiarized from another's work. The Mozilla wiki has a very clear copyright policy:

"All contributions to MozillaWiki are under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC-BY-SA) version 3.0 or any later version."

https://wiki.mozilla.org/MozillaWiki:About

Which I would expect Mozilla employees to know about and abide by.

As full disclosure, I've hired Metalab in the past.

Yeah, but the appropriate reaction was to talk to anyone at Mozilla before writing a public blog post in a fairly transparent attempt to get some free PR.

Ahem, I appreciate that Mozilla is on the side of the angels and all, but after you create one of the most notable pieces of software in the world, take eight figures a year from Google for advertising, and zealously protect your own trademarks, you cease to get my "Oh, small company doesn't understand how IP works -- well, time for a quick private chitchat to rectify their understanding" latitude with regards to infringement.

P.S. Contrast this with how we collectively reacted when a Microsoft partner ripped off Plurk's design.

Apples and oranges. Plurk's entire UI, code and all, was stolen and launched as a competing product.

And if nothing was said, do you think that Mozilla would have made their own design up or simply continued with the stolen one?

Apparently, they had already ditched the design. [http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/09/metalab-accuses-mozilla-of-...]

It could very well be that I'm tired and missing something, but I don't see where it says that in the TC article. And I don't personally run Firefox, so I can't go through the pages of designs on the page linked to in the TC quote to verify this myself.

FTA (emphasis mine): Mozilla is now aware of a post by MetaLab that shows a Mozilla developer copying prior design work. The mockups they cite were an early proof of concept created by cut-and-paste, never final designs. Mozilla respects the hard work of all designers and at no time meant to plagiarize original content. The in-progress designs for the Jetpack SDK’s IDE are available here and following initial sign-off on the proof of concept, the IDE was developed entirely independent of MetaLabs’ work.

The Microsoft partner in question actually launched their design.

Ie, they got caught later.

Mozilla employees ought to know the policy and understand how it applies to what they do on the wiki. On that we can agree. But when one fails to follow the policy, and in the absence of any other evidence, is it reasonable to assume that they willfully did so?

When it's a ripoff of design work by a company Mozilla opted not to pay?

Yes, yes it is.

It's a current mockup of a UI that appears to be copy-pasted directly from the website of a UI design company that put in a bid on this very project and was rejected.

At best, this was a gross and irresponsible move by Mozilla. And if it's not planned to be in the final product, it's also misleading.

It doesn't say UI, it says Functionality. And it doesn't say Final Product, it says Mock-ups.

"it doesn't say Final Product, it says Mock-ups"

It's still irresponsible to use those images and that layout, after rejecting a bid by that design company to create images and layout for the product, even in a mockup.

It is irresponsible, for sure. But is an appropriate reaction to set up a big witch hunt and publicly shame Mozilla? Is that how businesses and organizations should be treating each other? People make mistakes. Give them a chance to make things right before you try to do damage to someone's reputation.

Would you hold the same opinion if microsoft had done this and not mozilla? (just asking)

Mozilla also recorded and released a lengthy video tutorial portraying and promoting the product, which entirely uses MetaLab's design, with absolutely no indication that the design is only an internal mock-up.

(They have since made the video "private" on Vimeo, though it is still on all of their promotional material.)

I really have to agree. "Functionality Mock-ups" don't even remotely equal launching a stolen design.

I suspect it went like this:

"Wow, the Metalab stuff looks great. Let's ask for a quote!"

[asks for, gets quote]

"Crap. That's way out of our budget. But we do love that style of design."

"Hey, design intern, can you 'shop some of our content into their layout to serve as a functional mockup until we figure out what we're going to do for the real design?"

[intern shops in content, mockup gets posted to wiki, internet drama ensues]

The infraction really seems to be that this is public. Knocking off other sites for purposes of internal mockups and basic functional blocking seems totally sane.

Most likely, whoever designed that took the "let's do something like metalab" too seriously.

Really? That's cool?

Internal design or not, saying to your hypothetical intern "hey go knock off the design of the company we decided not to hire until we find something else" is whack.

Why?

Its not yours. Don't use it.

Why do you think its OK?

Why do you think that they are taking value away from Metalab by using the design as a mock-up that is never intended to be a final product?

I don't think that's the issue. For me its very simple: this is Metalab's Intellectual Property, and it should be respected.

In my opinion, it will be difficult if not impossible for Mozilla to create a truly original design if they are mocking up with Metalab's work.

Agree to disagree.

I didn't say I thought it was okay. You made a statement, I was asking for some explanation.

Only problem with that theory is that the images were uploaded by the project lead on Mozilla's part, not some random intern.

I'm not sure that it's fair to say that Mozilla ripped off his design. The images were uploaded by a single user to a semi-public wiki. It's not as though the whole of Mozilla decided on it.

Sure, but borrowing so liberally usually merits at least a credit to the original artists.

That's just common decency in the artistic world.

Sure, but contacting Mozilla to tell them you'd like the images removed or a credit would be a reasonable reaction. Writing a sensationalist blog post accusing Mozilla of "stealing your design" in their "new design" is, in my opinion, a more serious violation of common decency.

Shall we just wait and see what Mozilla has to say? It's all very well playing devils advocate, but until both sides are known it's still supposition one way or the other.

Unless you're involved somehow, that is.

Based on the speed with which they removed the images from https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Jetpack/FlightDeck after the link was posted here, I'm pretty sure they're aware of this thread.

I think they've had time to give a public apology or at least a simple "we're looking into this issue". I'm disappointed that they haven't done either of those yet.

Perhaps they're looking to do this professionally and privately without making immediate public statements that will seem like excuses while everyone is out of their minds with rage over some mock-ups on a wiki?

Seeing as the issue is already public, a quick "we're looking into the issue" would be a reasonable, professional response. They don't need to make a public statement that specifically acknowledges any wrongdoing, but they should make a point that they recognize the issue and are trying to work it out rather than simply burying it.

EDIT: at this point, Mozilla has given a response to MetaLabs that appears to have satisfied them. That's good enough for me.

(BTW what makes you think people are "out of their minds with rage"? Mozilla did something irresponsible, but I'm not going to get angry about it.)

> Sure, but contacting Mozilla to tell them you'd like the images removed or a credit would be a reasonable reaction.

But where's the marketing/seo angle in that?

I completely agree. I've had my work repurposed, many times, even by notable members of certain programming circles. It is funny when it happens, as in the case case of Microsoft/Plurk but this guy comes off as a classic case study of a douche to demand some sort of public apology and reparation. I mean, the folks responsible for the Mozilla site took the design down as soon as they were notified of the issue, in a timely manner as required by the DMCA. As stated, Mozilla is a big company with a large number of resources, like interns and offshore programmers that don't always do the right thing. The truth is that situations like these are simply used a the PR stunt.

I actually want Mozilla to steal my content, edit it for me, sexy it up, blog about it, tweet it out, etc. just as long as they send me some Google juice.

I don't see any other mock-ups or screenshots there, that kind of leads me to believe this was the possible working 'goal' for the developers, not just a brainstorm.

It's inappropriate to make public accusations based on assumptions. Fortunately, one doesn't need to operate based solely on assumption, since asking for clarification is easy.

The linked article has been updated: the MetaLab and Mozilla guys have now spoken on the phone. The material was used in both the launch announcement and video for the product, but the design has since been changed. Mozilla have apologised. A follow-up post from MetaLab is promised for tomorrow.

"That said, it was used in their launch video as well as their blog post announcing the product."

Actually the stolen graphics were used in a real product - the marketing. The moment they used these graphics externally to drum up interest they crossed the line.

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