Hacker News Reader

Comment by iamgilesbowkett | Hacker News Reader

This is a blatant copy of my web app Hacker Newspaper.

http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2011/11/imitation-is-sincer...

I understand that it is frustrating to you to feel that someone may have been inspired by some aspects of your project. However, I think it's important to consider a few things for perspective:

1. Your web app is close to, if not already, dead: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2011/03/i-may-let-hacker-ne...

2. So what if this guy was inspired by your app? Who doesn't do research before implementing an idea?

3. Your most persuasive evidence--the header font--appears to be the most unpopular aspect of the app, judging by the comments, and so will probably be changed shortly, anyway.

4. The developer is not in direct competition with your project, as he didn't even code it for the same platform (yes, an iPad can browse the web, but yours was not, specifically, an iPad app).

The app is not at all dead, and I use it on the iPad far more often than on my computers. If you're curious enough to search my site for Hacker Newspaper, you must have also noticed the numerous minor tweaks and updates to Hacker Newspaper I've made since that post where I briefly considered dropping it over six months ago.

Additionally, my most persuasive evidence is not my header graphic, it's just an extremely specific example. My most persuasive evidence is that every single aspect of his app is a direct copy of mine.

Well maybe you're right. Since the author openly offered his contact information, maybe the best way to resolve the situation is to discuss the matter with him directly and privately. I wish you both success.

Your web app is a blatant copy of paper publishing that's been going on for decades. Get real, dude.

It's got the same name, dude, and the same feature set.

I mean... it's a newspaper format. There are only so many ways to implement that. Besides, the iPad app and the webapp look fairly different IMO.

As for the name, seems to me "hacker news paper" is a fairly obvious name to arrive at.

Not knocking your webapp. Just saying there really isn't an issue here.

Consider for a moment the cultural environment you're trying to make this argument in. I truly believe that many many programmers have cognitive dissonance around intellectual property, perceived value of invention/innovation, and what their compensation and rights should be around that value.

In the hacker news crowd, I think it is significantly more present.

I don't recall your opinions on these topics, but prepare to be faced with some pretty intense logical fallacies today.

Feel free to email me at sam@sammcd.com if you would like to discuss this more.

I just want to say that I did not use your app as a source at all when designing my app, but I did use newspapers.

If this is the case, why did you not use a gothic, New York Times-y font for your header graphic, such as is much, much more typical for newspapers than the font you did use? Why does your header graphic appear to be nearly identical to mine? Why is your functionality nearly identical to mine? It's just a massive coincidence?

I simply went to http://www.dafont.com/ and searched until I found a font I liked, thats all that happened here.

A newspaperish grid layout hardly seems like something that's unique enough to go around accusing someone of ripping it off from you. Or did you rip off the New York Times et al?

Newspaper grid layout, downloads the text of the stories, he even used a very similar font in his header graphic to the font in my header graphic -- and the font in my header graphic was a whimsical indulgence because it doesn't really look like a newspaper header font at all. The New York Times and many, many other papers use heavy gothic fonts for their names, and I think that if he got the design from there, he would have done the same.

If you want to accuse someone of plagiarism, you're going need a hell of a lot more evidence than "the font looks a bit similar".

Here's the deal: Create something better than he does, and people use your version. If he creates something better than you do, people use his version. All copying allowed. How about that?

There was someone on here a while ago that was concerned that someone stole his app a safe a 'pro' version without ads. The advice you give here is essentially the same advice they got.

If someone rips you off, improve on it and have the better product. It's too bad that your apps are so similar -- but the concept, layout and elements are old-hat. If he ripped you off on purpose I highly doubt he'd be eager about the HN community finding out about it.

So your rather harsh accusation of ripoff boils down to:

* Use of a certain layout style which is literally centuries old.

* Prefetching content, an extremely common practice in computing.

* A similar font.

I think you need to seriously reexamine the originality of your work.

How many unique visitors do you get per day?

It's how I generally read HN.

HNP is a popular if niche app.

Meanwhile, it doesn't make a whit of difference to the larger issue.

If he's getting 1000s of unique visitors per day, then I can understand his desire to cry fowl, if he's getting more like 10 per day, then he has nothing to complain about. There really is no larger issue here, only someone yelling "First!".

What are you basing these metrics on?

If I have 800 daily unique users of something I put real work into, and someone launches a very similar product with the same name then I have every right to ask them to consider a name change.

The OP needs to start off with an apology because in the very least he did not Google his own name and concept before launching. That's awkwardly gauche in my books.

So?

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