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Comment by JackWebbHeller | Hacker News Reader

The whole debate is frankly embarrassing for both sides... Of course, admittedly more so for Curebit - but I can't be the only one who thinks that DHH's cocky attitude, publicly tweeting things like "Fucking scumbags", is just embarrassing when he is the main face of a friendly and professional company like 37Signals...?

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Most companies handle this with a well architected wall of PR. DHH is managing to be direct while maintaining full integrity. I don't think it's embarrassing at all, it's quite an achievement, and it's hugely refreshing to see.

Curebit not only screwed up bad, but they kept digging deeper and deeper in their debate. I'm really glad they're being called for with directness and severity. You should be too.

Maintaining integrity usually doesn't consist of calling people "fucking scumbags". Notify people of their mistake, make it known that what they have done is not acceptable but crossing into personal insults and curses is not acceptable.

fucking |ˈfəkiNG|
used for emphasis or to express anger, annoyance, contempt, or surprise.
scumbag |ˈskəmˌbag|

a contemptible or objectionable person.

It's appropriate.

EDIT: here's full context per JackWebbHeller's request:

@dhh The Sharebooster site is serving even more images straight off the Highrise server: http://yfrog.com/oddh4zoj . Fucking scumbags.

It's appropriate when taken out of context with two generic dictionary definitions...

ad hominem attacks are never appropriate

That's not true at all. They are appropriate when you are actually trying to deflate the opposing side's character. For example, if someone has a history of making poor choices, it's likely that any further choice they make is also likely poor. That's why judges often take into consideration whether an offense is someone's first, or someone's third.

With that being said, both sides definitely should have reconsidered their PR strategy. Both being techies, it's reasonable to assume that they should be fully aware of how things like this propagate on the internet.

So when someone makes the same mistake 3 times, you call them a moron and that fixes it?

Did you bother to read my entire post? The first part was correcting his statement. The second part denounced the insult in this case.

Yes I did. In any case an ad hominem attack is a logical fallacy, and as such it is never appropriate.

This was not ad hominem, please look it up.

An ad hominem is used within the confines of an argument. There is no argument here. He is calling them what they are. They stole, that is clear, the argument is air-tight (they have even apologized).

I wouldn't use this kind of language myself (not in any circumstance), but ad hominem it is not.

Correct. I used the words literally, I meant "personal attacks" instead, which frankly I don't think helped him make his point stronger.

"Ad Hominem" doesn't apply here.[1]

(DHH didn't say that using 37Signals assets directly was bad because they were fucking scumbags, just that what they did was bad and they were fucking scumbags as a result.)

[1] http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html

Not acceptable to who? If the course of action you've outlined (notify people of their mistakes etc..) is what you feel is right then doing so would be maintaining your integrity. If DHH feels like they're contemptible for doing what they did tweeting that they are 'fucking scumbags' is maintaining cohesiveness and integrity between his words and feelings. If you choose to think less of DHH as a result of the way he behaved then that is your prerogative, but based on the things he's said publicly about not caring much about seeming 'unprofessional' I don't think he will care much, if at all.

It's not acceptable if you want to present yourself as the spokesperson for a friendly business. If you use your Twitter account as a platform for expressing both your personal and corporate thoughts I think it's best to keep the wording civil. Roasting Curebit over Twitter like this seems childish to me at best.

There are no such things as personal thoughts and corporate thoughts. They're all just thoughts.

Define acceptable. "friendly business" - as opposed to "unfriendly business"? Explain the difference between personal and "corporate" thoughts.

"typical East Coast bullshit." is how Steve Jobs described this sort of drivel.

We've entered an age of clearer, more direct and transparent communications. There's no time nor need for formalities.

civility, empathy, professionalism and respect for other people aren't formalities and I think there's lots of room, time and need for them in modern business practice.

Good thing you're here to tell 37signals' owners how they have to behave to be taken seriously as a company. With that kind of personal language, they'd never get any serious customers!

Oh wait.

Here's the thing: this is how they've built their company. This is the kind of thing they say.

It's totally "acceptable" for DHH to tweet whatever the hell he wants, because that's the image he cultivated. That's what people love him for. That's why they follow him on Twitter, attend his talk, buy the books he cowrote.

You can dislike it all you like - nobody's forcing you to read it, nor forcing you to talk that way. But where on earth do you get off saying it's "unacceptable"?

> It's not acceptable if you want to present yourself as the spokesperson for a friendly business.

37signals is very open about being an opinionated company. Their blog is quite happy to take a stance, they've always enjoyed mixing it up, and they've never seemed to have an issue with telling people "don't like it, don't use our products".

That's 100% not true. Not in every case.

I recently had a conversation with one of the friendliest businesses I patronize (an espresso bar in Sydney). The owner swore like a sailor about an ex-staff member who'd come back with the keys he'd "lost", and stolen from him in full view of the security cameras.

You need to know our audience, and to have chosen the personality you're prepared to project as your businesses spokesperson, but DHH (and Ben) have clearly both chosen to be perceived as "guys who'll use strong language when people steal from them". That choice might not "work" if you're in the clergy, or a school principal, but making that choice as a café owner or software company spokesperson falls a long way short of "not acceptable", at least in my book.

It's always impossible to measure the _really_ interesting stuff, but I wonder if 37Signals earned more benefit from people thinking things like "DHH is _really_ passionate about his business." than they lost from people who though "he used curse words on Twitter, I don't want to do business with him anymore"? (Patrick? How do ou a/b test founder personalities for conversion rate? ;-)

Big

Well, he had a conversation with YOU; DHH had a conversation with 52,000. I felt the ad hominem attacks were a little brusque, and while they certainly didn't offend me, I can understand that some would consider his reaction a bit unprofessional.

I'd personally reserve a moniker like "fucking scumbags" for people who would steal from their family/friends to fuel a coke habit. Or maybe Go Daddy.

EDIT: ok, I'll now admit that I misunderstood the term "ad hominem attack". A more appropriate definition would be "overly-generalized insult left open to interpretation", e.g. "douchebag". Something along the lines of "fucking lazy hack" would probably have been more accurate.

I think I could stage strong arguments that 1) DHH considers his coworkers to strongly fit in the second half of the term "family/friends", and 2) that for some people "serial entrepreneurship" carries many of the traits of cocaine addiction...

Are you saying that they weren't fucking scumbags?

Integrity is personal -- and it means doing what you say, and vice versa. In other words, congruency.

Which means that it's perfectly integral and congruent for DHH to call somebody a "fucking scumbag" when that person steals from DHH's company. His values, and his words, and his actions all line up perfectly. He is behaving exactly like himself.

Even if you fall back on the dictionary definition of "the quality of being honest and having strong moral character," it fits.

Just because YOU don't think somebody should use a certain word doesn't mean they lack integrity. It also doesn't mean that anyone else cares.

while not always true, a lack of professionalism typically signals a lack of integrity.

There is no single definition of "professionalism," and the word is therefore totally meaningless the way you use it.

I have found that "professionalism" is generally incompatible with honesty and integrity.

Professionals are judged on appearance and appearance of action: not on what they actually do and the consequences of their actions. Similarly, to act "professionally" often means to act against your personal beliefs, to suppress your emotion, to ignore empathy and to react coldly.

To be "business-like" is often to be cruel and socially irresponsible: that's "just business".

I would like to be judged by my demeanour rather than my appearance and on the consequence of my actions rather than my actions.

I find it remarkable the extent to which this comment was down voted. I stand by my comments, and will even go one step further to explicitly state that I think DHH and Curebit handled this unprofessionally. I don't know any of the people involved, so I can't say a thing about their integrity, which isn't my point. How you handle yourself in situations like this signals certain things to people that they then interpret and use a data to form an opinion about you and your business.

I've posted elsewhere how the Curebit misstep caused me to form an opinion about the maturity of their product. I'm not going to bother of relating how DHH's response has changed my opinion of the 37Signals business, especially on HN given the ridiculous moderating practices related to anything remotely critical of 37Signals.

I agree. I'm not sure where the ambiguity around professionalism came about. But, I truly doubt anyone misunderstood what you were saying and decided to take it apart on some weird technicality. DHH could have been the bigger man and I believe his words would have carried gravitas had that been the case. He has the right to publicly react how he likes, but it seemed a bit childish to me and didn't evoke any sense of empathy.

Yup, exactly my point. Thanks for the right words ;-)

I've been thinking this morning about the knee jerk moderation and failure to communicate in this thread. There's a strong undercurrent of "Internet entrepreneur" that makes up HN, and I'd expect the discourse here to reflect the manner in which people communicate in their business endeavours. Knee jerk reactions, pedantry and emotional dogma don't have much place in business.

I'd kinda hoped that there could be some discussion about professionalism, what it means and how we can apply it to what we do. It appears that I expect too much, or the wrong things from HN.

>when that person steals from DHH's company

So now using some design without permission is called stealing? so, copyright infringement is stealing or not?

I'd be interested in understanding why someone would vote this down. I know it's tangential to the discussion, but it's a really glaring hypocrisy. To call it "copyright infringement" in the context of digital media and "stealing" in the context of website design strikes me as disingenuous, at best. I tend to be obtuse when it comes to these matters, however. I'd love to hear some more subtle commentary on the matter.

With all due respect to Jason and DHH, I wouldn't consider 37signals a "friendly" company. Mailchimp is a friendly company, but even still, I could see Ben (or any founder) having a similar reaction.

If I found someone blatantly repurposing something I worked hard to create, I'd have a similar reaction. This guys aren't CXOs of a Fortune 100 company that need to fear how the board and stock holders may react (and god fucking bless 'em for that). They're scrappy guys still hustling like they launched yesterday.

Calling them "fucking scumbags" isn't a cocky response, it's a free reality check. Poor Allan had a pretty significant lapse of judgment, and DHH may have given him the most valuable lesson of his life.

37Signals is making their point heard, but it's not the professional way to handle things. I completely understand the reaction, DHH is rightfully upset. It's usually best to take some time to cool off and then respond when you're a little less emotional.

That's not DHH way. He is fast with everything.

But that doesn't make it right. "It's how he approaches everything" isn't a reason, it's context.

Just because an emotional response goes against MBA Corporate PR 101 doesn't make it wrong. He can do whatever he wants, and he does. In the context of his company, I'd even say it's a winning business strategy, because it's different and doesn't feel artificial, which is refreshing in this age of sterilized corporate communications, and is therefore memorable.

And there's nothing morally wrong about fighting back against people who have ripped you off.

While I believe DHHs reaction/words are entirely attributable to his passion for his company/product/coworkers, Cynical-Me also notes that this choice of public personality is generating an awful lot of pageviews/eyeballs/comments, and even the negative-to-DHH comments are largely positive about Highrise/37Signals.

If a hughely talented but completely amoral PR specialist had scripted this, perhaps it would have turned out exactly the same way...

Big

They're scrappy guys still hustling like they launched yesterday.

I don't think DHH has had a need to hustle in a while. He could have easily embarrassed cluebit with a witty remark, rather than embarrassing himself at the same time by the choice of language.

For DHH to have "embarrassed himself," he would have to feel embarrassed. He clearly doesn't, since he uses this kind of straightforward, salty language all the time.

It's only in your head that he is embarrassed.

You can embarrass yourself without feeling it, watch a political debate sometime.

And yes, in my head I do feel embarrassed for him when I see him lowering himself to name-calling over such a trivial issue.

I have no problems with salty language between equal opponents or when the other side is clearly malicious. In this case the opponent is such a pity that it feels akin to someone slapping a 5yr old for scratching their lamborghini.

I don't and wouldn't use the language that he did.

But what he said was true. This wasn't ad hominem because it wasn't an argument. The argument is clear, Curebit stole, and have apologized. Therefore his reaction is not an attack but an accurate label.

Whether it is "professional" or not is a different story.

I don't know about that, the founders of Curebit are old enough to be held responsible for their actions. A 5 year old, not so much.

A 5-year-old who is probably actually in his 20s, just got $1.2 million in funding, and said "yeah I stole, but it was only up for a week, and only a test, lesson: if I steal, give credit"?

Please. If we're going to hold an intelligent debate, you need to work on your analogies.

I think the funding reflects more on the investors than anything else.

And the level of incompetence at play here is precisely what makes DHH's reaction feel so out of place. Without thinking anyone could come up with a dozen classy ways to play the situation. Instead he chose the one that makes himself look less than ideal...

I don't think DHH has had a need to hustle in a while.

Exactly. Guys in his situation don't need to, but they still choose to. When you're playing with that sort of passion and intensity, you defend with vigor. That's embarrassing?

It's not like he drove over to cluebit's office and started smashing shit. He called him/them out. That's it, that's all.

Strong language and strong feelings over work is considered very unprofessional and therefore an "embarrassment" to workaday types with starched blue oxford shirts and khaki pants. It's their worldview, which is fine. Except the starched shirts are always going around telling the rest of us (with green hair, funny company names, or a love of limber, lashing, fierce words) that we are wrong and unacceptable when we're just going about our business the way we (and our customers) like.

The starched shirts feel a need to make everyone conform to their view.

So sadly, it's never "that's all" when it comes to them. We shall fight them on the shores, etc. etc.

I don't think DHH has had a need to hustle in a while.

It's cluebit that are scrappy guys still hustling, even if they got over a million in investor money...

You 're not the only one. I would even call it an understandable mistake for someone who just launched. Telling them to go get some ethics, calling them indecent and scumbags is not the right response. You point their wrongdoings, and let others come to those conclusions, esp. when the accused shows some signs of repent.

For comparison, when the Oatmeal found his comics stolen, here's how he responded: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk

PS. i'm not defending anyone, but as an outsider i found the response was over the top and allangrant didn't call any names

Are you under the assumption that these are fresh-faced kids out of school who don't know how to dress themselves, let alone "launch" a web app?

You might want to go and study some LinkedIn profiles before apologizing for these guys. And as far is DHH is concerned, why would you want to steal from him in the first place. He gave his best work away for free. I'm no fan but I believe he's entitled to call these people out. In whatever tone he deems appropriate. Get used to it if you think following Curebit's steps is the way to go. It's a rough world out there.

Yet Stallman is coddled every time he calls someone "evil" and wishes them dead. Odd that.

> why would you want to steal from him in the first place

Read your own answer here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3453379

I don't get it. Are you saying that 37Signals should be proud that someone made unauthorized use of their work for profit?

It's not unheard of.

http://panic.com/extras/ripoff/

I'm not disagreeing with your other points, but Stallman did not wish anyone dead. He actually said nobody deserves to die, but we sometimes deserve the end of their bad influence.

I think most people with experience and maturity understood what was said by Stallman and interpreted it correctly, including the timing of his remarks.

Neither you, nor I, know what Stallman wished for or against.

You realize there's two parts to the oatmeal response right? It also includes strong language. For example: "To the users of FunnyJunk: I never had plans to sue FunnyJunk and get it shut down; I just wanted my stolen comics removed -- your admin is a moron who chooses his words about as carefully as a mule chooses where to take a shit."

Anyone who has seen the wrath poured out on people who dislike (or disagree with) the oatmeal on its facebook page has to laugh a bit when the creator -- I forget his name -- is held up as a model of level-headed behavior.

you realize that was 1 year after the situation started and after he contacted the funnyjunk staff

That wasn't even poor choice of words, he deliberately tried to instigate a riot and sensationalized the response.

I agree actually, I was just pointing out that it was a bit hypocritical to hold up the oatmeal as a good example of responding to being ripped off. I'm not particularly offended by the response of DHH to curebits either.

Yeah, I meant what he said in the quote--I don't know if he should have said anything more, but it certainly seems far from a mere "poor choice of words".

Amazing response. This is an even stronger case, as these clone sites are duplicating his business, and taking money right from his pocket in the process. He/She handled it in a standup fashion.

This makes the whole debate even stranger. The fella from Curebit messed up in a lot of ways (really, he couldn't even be bothered to host the content himself?), but on a scale of 1 to a million, I would put this whole mess at closer to 1. Let's be frank, any html/css/js you toss online can be sourced, it is the nature of the client side rendering world we live in.

Where do you draw the line, is it not okay to use someone else's javascript function? Is it not okay to use their mix of background colour and fonts? When we start to decide what is and is not okay, we start to create some scary precedence.

Two comments. Firstly, it seems to me that the current mega upload drama seems to say that the FBI thinks funnyjunk's business model puts them smack in the middle of whatever the proper legal terminology is when lawyers mean "fucking scumbags". Secondly, you only need to click on "update" link from the page you linked to to find the oatmeal guy calling the funnyjunk guy a moron...

I understand that there's a large section of the US society that has a significantly lower tolerance for "curse words" than at least my cross section of Australian society, but "fucking scumbag" is pretty close the the terminology I'd use if someone "stole" a bunch of design work like that from my business (I'd not use that terminology quite so publicly, since the other stakeholders where I am wouldn't appreciate it, and I'm happy to self-censor on a business front to meet their expectations...)

that was a year later

Did you see the update?

"To the users of FunnyJunk: I never had plans to sue FunnyJunk and get it shut down; I just wanted my stolen comics removed -- your admin is a moron who chooses his words about as carefully as a mule chooses where to take a shit."

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk2

Regarding your dhh comment, quite a few engineers cultivate this image of themselves very consciously (and some companies, although not 37Signals, have a reputation for having higher concentrations of such engineers). At the very least, they're smart people and therefore are likely conscious that the way they publicly speak influences how most people will view them and the company they represent.

It's a shame that we all can't be polite and friendly and remember pg's golden rule every once in a while, but alas there's not much we can do about it.

Let's spend our time on more important things :)

Would you prefer the (more creative) way Tiny Tower approached Zynga for blatantly ripping their game concept + design? yes, its embarrassing for both sides - but people SHOULD know these kind of things

https://s3.amazonaws.com/nbpromo/dearzynga.jpg

It's interesting that zynga mostly gets a free pass from name-calling when they ripoff game ideas. The only way to explain it is that zynga is a public company that makes lots of money, which surprisingly gives them some sort of immunity.

How does Zynga get a free pass? People rip into them all the time for stealing, copying, ripping off, etc. other people's games, ideas, and mechanics.

There have even been lawsuits, some of which Zynga lost.

They make so much money they don't care, and they made that money long before they were public.

I partially agree and thought the same thing when reading DHH's responses but it seems that that may be part of his personality. If you read any of his blog posts on SVN he tends to use some "not-so-friendly language"... In my opinion, it gets annoying and seems a bit unintelligent when he is always cursing.

It's truly shocking to hear DHH use profanity.

Nice sarcasm. The fact still remains that maybe DHH should take a deep breath and remember back before he was a millionaire. I'm by no means condoning what Curebit has done but unless DHH tried to contact them discreetly and they told him to go hell, I think maybe he could have taken it down a notch before he went roadhouse on these guys.

This is a little beyond the pale and I fail to see why DHH should contact them discreetly. No, I don't like DHH's attitude sometimes but lifting code straight from someone's site is just so brain-dead it defies belief. The vast majority of developers would certainly have a look at other peoples' layouts but lifting code straight is just unreal.

This will be controversial, but if it were real programming code i would be angry. Since it's just html/css, static stuff, one may say it's not a big deal. In fact that was curebit's first response: they asked if they should keep the code and just add credit. I know it's wrong, but in the broad internet ethics it seems to be considered a certain form of fair use.

"if it were real programming code i would be angry " -> the work of "programmers" is worth plenty, but the work of designers is worth zilch. To be fair, this is also the attitude taken by Curebit.

I think what you are trying to do away with is something fundamental to DHH/37 Signals. They think they got to where they are because of who they are, and they've gone on to write several books and blog posts on the matter.

I am personally not a fan of their attitude, but there are a lot of people enabling them.

No public shaming means no disincentive to do the same thing again to some other company.

And given that they also seem to have stolen someone's logo, seems like they're in need of a lesson.

http://yfrog.com/odx67yoj

You might want to go back and read the exchange on Twitter.

Back before DHH was a millionaire, he was creating Rails instead of copy-pasting other people's landing pages.

Being a rude person for a long time should not grant rights to be a rude person in the present.

Agreed!

I tend to agree. We are ALL inspired by other people's work. If you say you are "completely original" then you are the scumbag and a blatant liar.

I think DHH should have just said that "I am sure it will be resolved and Curebit will do the right thing." instead. The whole situation is just lame.

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