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.
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."
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.
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.
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?
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'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.
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.)
"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.
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.
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 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.
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.)
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.
Andrew Wilkinson is constantly freaking out over design similarities and rip offs. In some cases, the designs are not even close. In others, such as in this case, they are very close. In either case, I don't think that these constant public tantrums are ever effective at accomplishing anything positive.
What Andrew did accomplish in this case was that he ensured that Mozilla will likely not become one of their clients, even though it was clear Mozilla considered them to be a good firm, and would have possibly sent them work in the future.
The professional thing to do in this scenario would be to contact the parties involved to see what is going on and discuss the issue, including any concerns you have, directly and like adults. It's wrong to assume you understand someone's motivations when you haven't given them an opportunity to explain themselves, especially when you go on to type up a scathing blog post about them in which you publish private e-mail correspondence between yourself and the party that you are criticizing.
Weird assumption - that Mozilla liked them and would have given them work in the future if he would not have complained. Though, I agree that it probably could have been resolved out of the public's view.
Why is it a weird assumption? Their blog post shows an e-mail from Daniel (the person they are lambasting) that says "Your company has first-class UI/graphics design chops and I will certainly keep MetaLab in mind when bidding out future projects that require such services."
Boilerplate perhaps, but generally if a company is willing to rip off your designs for use in their own internal concepts, I would take that as a sign that they like what you are doing.
I mean, I think this whole thing is stupid, but if they've shown they'll do it once, what's to stop from doing it again? Why would they hire you after that?
No one is saying that they shouldn't have complained... what some are arguing is that they should have complained directly to Mozilla instead of the Internet at large. By making their complaint (valid as it is) so public, they've risked any possibility that they could get design work from Mozilla in the future. A quick email to say, ?Hey, we noticed that the design of this tool that's in development was copied from our design" would have done the trick. Instead of riling up designers online, this could have been handled much better.
This should be a wake up call to MetaLab's prospective clients and partners: If you do something that MetaLab doesn't like, they won't call you to talk about it. They will first hit Twitter and their blog and try to shame you in the most public way they possibly can, ensuring that the message is broadcast to millions.
"something MetaLab doesn't like"? That's a really soft euphemism to use in place of "use their images and design on mockups of a product after rejecting their bid to do images and design for that product".
Granted, MetaLab could have chosen a better approach. But don't act like they don't have darn good reason to be upset.
The images that were used for the mockups on Mozilla's semi-public wiki were simply screenshots/mocks done by Mozilla that look like an entirely unrelated Metalabs design. Mozilla didn't get mocks of FlightDeck from them, turn them down and then use it behind their backs.
They probably just had some intern do a rough functional mockup in the same style and the kid went too far... Really, they took it down instantly and there were clearly no bad intentions... What's all the fuss? Why flip out and post on twitter and your blog about it instead of just replying to that email he obviously already had lying around and saying "Yo, you took our design man!" and the guy would have replied "Uh oh! Damn interns!"
I would never work with Metalabs after this, some one on my team makes a boo boo and emails out a screenshot that he hacked together in photoshop and BOOM my reputation is ruined because Metalabs flies off the handle. No thanks.
My argument isn't that they shouldn't be upset. It's that they have handled a situation so poorly that their actions and consequences are worse than what they are originally critiquing!
Mozilla made a mistake by posting images that they shouldn't have posted. If they wanted that design, they should have coughed up the cash and gotten MetaLab to do the work. But publicly shaming a company to try and damage their reputation, including posting private e-mails for the world to see without so much as a courtesy call to the person you have a problem before you distribute a message which may reach hundreds of thousands, or millions of eyes is, at best, horribly short sighted and extraordinarily unprofessional.
So posting someones work you did not pay for in public and using for promotion is ok, complaining about that in public is not ok?
Strange world, indeed.
How are his claims not true? Mozilla posted Metalab's designs on a public wiki page and used them for promotion - after rejecting the design (ie. not paying for it). If you don't want to pay for it, don't use it. That's pretty straightforward ethical behaviour, I would've thought.
MetaLab did no work for Mozilla beyond giving them an estimate for work to be completed. The concept drawing the Mozilla mistakenly posted on their wiki was, by all accounts, a concept that was produced internally at Mozilla.
"Mozilla is now aware of a post by MetaLabs 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 (http://flightdeck.zalewa.info/) and following initial sign-off on the proof of concept, the IDE was developed entirely independent of MetaLabs’ work."
This is pretty shameful. These were all posted by wiki user Dandonkulous (Daniel Buechner; @dandonkulous), who was Metalab's contact in the article. These may just be comps rather than a full product, but regardless, they demonstrate that significant effort has gone into producing a nearly identical copy of the original Metalab design. That's disappointing; if these allegations are correct, I'm very disappointed in Daniel and those involved at Mozilla in creating this product.
Update: Mozilla has removed the screenshots. Here are three of them:
Aside from the rights and wrongs done by both companies, ^^ this sentiment is the one that really makes me mad.
Mozilla gets notification from a company that they screwed up. Mozilla begins removing the objectionable material without delay. Mozilla gets flamed for "burying evidence".
I imagine this flame can't hurt as bad as the alternate one where people say Mozilla is just flaunting their wrongdoing by not taking the material down, but sheesh!
The issue had already gone public. The guys at Mozilla had a choice. They could either remove the material and play dumb, or remove the material, acknowledge the issue, and work with MetaLabs to find a satisfactory solution. At issue was not "removing the objectionable material", but "removing the material without any acknowledgment".
I find it surprising you would consider my call to Mozilla to "do the right thing" a flame. There was no anger or malice in anything I said, just a desire for someone at Mozilla to say "we are working with MetaLabs to sort out this issue". (I say all of this as a supporter of Mozilla, and a long-time user of the Mosaic-Netscape-Firefox browsers.)
MetaLabs: Hey, you guys are murdering children. We aren't going to contact you to confirm. Instead, we are going to publicly rip you a new one and make assumptions.
Someone at Mozilla: Whoa! Something went wrong. We didn't mean it that way, but let's fix it right away because we can.
Someone else at Moz: Should we say something?
Someone at Mozilla: No, we shouldn't. We don't have the whole story, and we don't want to make even more mistakes by saying something that isn't true.
Someone else at Moz: Okay. At least we started on the path of fixing the problem.
Public: OMGWTFBBQ COVERUP!!!!!! SPAEK NOW FOOLZ!!!
"we don't want to make even more mistakes by saying something that isn't true."
"We are working with MetaLabs to resolve the issue" would have been a perfectly fine public response. It would have made Mozilla's intentions clear, without piling on any new mistakes.
(BTW I find it interesting that people are yelling at me about jumping to conclusions, while themselves jumping to conclusions about me jumping to conclusions.)
Considering there was very little time between them reporting the issue and Mozilla changing the offending post, I don't think they had time to "work with MetaLab."
How do you know with any degree of certainty that Mozilla was "playing dumb" and not just taking down the material as a pre-emptive measure to try and fix the situation? Do you work at MetaLab or Mozilla?
I said they had a choice, and urged them to make the right one.
Until MetaLabs finally communicated what had happened, the scenario was ambiguous. IMO, Mozilla could have eliminated the ambiguity much sooner simply by saying "we are working with MetaLabs to resolve this."
Hmm from the looks of it it doesn't seem like they're actually using the design anywhere? As far as I can tell the image from Metalab has been placed on a public wiki.
Maybe this 31Three company needs to put up a blog post accusing MetaLab of "ripping off" their design. They could even put up comparative screenshots to show the obvious similarities, and could encourage their followers to contact MetaLab to register their displeasure. The directors of the company could also spend the day on Twitter publicly forwarding links to the blog post to their colleagues.
Seems like a great way to get some free publicity!
When I first saw the tweet I thought it was just a backyard/bedroom operator doing it for free. It is open source after all. But when I read that they tendered for the project and were turned down, that makes me really angry.
I hope they reach an agreement where Metalab is reimbursed for the entire amount of their initial quote.
> an agreement where Metalab is reimbursed for the entire
amount of their initial quote.
Why on earth would/should that happen over a few mockups? It's not that Mozilla asked Metalab to do a bunch of work, claimed it sucked so they wouldn't pay, and then used it anyway. No: Moz decided not to hire Metalab, and someone ripped off some existing work of Metalab's for some mockups.
Now, I think that was an inexcusable thing to do on the part of whoever did it, but even if it was actual Mozilla staff, I just don't see why Mozilla ought to pay Metalab for not working nor hire them unless they happened to be the second choice. (Because the first choice--assuming they were responsible--has got to go.)
Because the person responsible (not knowing who that is just yet) directly stole their images, violated their copyright and their intellectual property. Instead of tying things up with lawyers, mediation and strongly worded letters, why not simply pay what was quoted for, and forget it ever happened?
When you talk about lawyers and strongly worded letters, are you talking about MetaLab suing Mozilla over copyright issues, or are you talking about Mozilla suing MetaLab for trying to damage their reputation? And what about Daniel? Doesn't he have a reasonable expectation to privacy? I'm assuming he didn't give MetaLab permission to post his private correspondence with them on their website.
This is probably the mock-up that almost landed you the gig in the first place, but obviously that isn't going to happen now.
And you've undoubtedly convinced a few additional CEO's that absolute secrecy is the best way to operate. Let people participate in works-in-progress and someone is sure to get their knickers in a twist. This is also why more companies don't open source their tools: they expose themselves to patent infringement suits when anyone can read the code.
The proper recourse would be to email someone, or wait to see if your designs showed up in the final product. I mean, you aren't going to forget to check the theme on the latest version of Firefox.
Why do people try to convince designers that they should accept being ripped off in hopes that some of the people ripping them off will throw them a bone?
Why do people try to convince designers that they should accept being ripped off in hopes that some of the people ripping them off will throw them a bone?
You are talking about an internal mockup, not a released product. There is no justification to say that anyone was "ripped off", nor would Mozilla be "throwing them a bone" if they were to re-approach later after re-allocating more funding. My comment that this will not happen now is not to suggest that MetaLab should have been secretly hoping for a deal to happen anyway. However, their untempered response to the situation portray's them as unprofessional. I would not reconsider working with a firm who acted this way.
"You are talking about an internal mockup, not a released product."
I am talking about design work they used for promotional videos and screenshots. It matters in absolutely no way that upon this becoming public, Mozilla announced that they do not intend to use the design for production software.
"I would not reconsider working with a firm who acted this way."
I would not want a client who's hesitant to hire me on the grounds that they might not get away with ripping me off.
seems a shame for metalab to jump so quickly on mozilla in that way, mozilla havent been the golden boy in the geek crowd for a while but their labs are putting out some awesome stuff.
I'm late to this, and I wish I could avoid the gross generalization, but it seems that Hacker News has a bias against Metalab.
The comments on You're Killing Me, Zappos (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=812729) could be boiled down to "You can design a shiny mockup, but you can't make a successful, money-making website."
Apparently Mozilla liked Metalab design so much that it was getting ready to actually use it in their product. Price happened to be too steep so they passed.
What Metalab should do is that it should contact Mozilla and tell them: "Look guys, we saw that you put much effort and actually introduced our design into development version of your product. We think it really looks great so maybe you should reconsider and purchase this design from us. We can give you discount on this."
Instead they went "This is mine. You have not paid to touch it. Don't touch it! Hey, everybody!!! They are touching it but they didn't pay me!"
Except, of course, I already took the apples home.
Yesterday.
(Or in Mozilla's case, three months prior.)
I get that folks love Mozilla and don't like MetaLab, but the contortions people are going through to try to paint them as wrong or stupid on this issue are headache-inducing. I wish people would just honestly say, "I don't care that Mozilla ripped off MetaLab."
I can't force myself to think about the design as an item that comes in a opaque box with price tag. You have to try if design fits. If it fits you keep it, pay for it and everyone is happy. If not, you don't pay for it and toss it away what apparently Mozilla did. Same thing you do with photographs. You try many of them, but buy only the ones that go into final design. I wonder if MetaLab pays for all the photos that go through its designers hands.
There are some screenshot that prove that at some point that design was tried to be fitted. That's all. Not that Mozilla took design home and unboxed it without paying.
Im interested in what Mozilla mean by: "the mockups they cite were an early proof of concept created by cut-and-paste, never final designs." (mentioned elsewhere in this thread).
According to the wiki history [1] they were added as late as 12th/16th Feb 2010. Admitedly posted as Latest Mock-ups and Screenshots but there are no other designs or alternatives proposed.
It's easy enough to call these concepts now: but without a complaint from metalab (which was handled poorly) would they have made it further towards "final design"?
For Mozilla's sake, I hope it was the design team they hired that did the knockoff rather than an inhouse designer. Although it's probably too early to jump to conclusions at this point.
If they did, how would they know which site to knock off? Unless it's either a bizarre coincidence, the Mozilla guys would have had to pass the mockups on to them. And they still had to upload them afterwards!
I remain amused/disturbed that so many people here sincerely believe that if they wrong someone else, the wronged party owes them a back-channel discussion to resolve things cheaply and quietly.
If you make promo material with someone's designs (after declining to pay), you should be very grateful if that person's willing to work it out without involving lawyers. A public apology and a promise to do things better is far cheaper than an attorney's billable hours.
If that person is kind enough to do all this quietly, then be twice as grateful for that person's kindness.
Mozilla and Aza Raskin have understood this better than their defenders - when you're in the hole, stop digging. No excuses, no defensiveness. Fix your mistake, acknowledge that you were wrong, explain your error if it was innocent, and apologize.
Their homepage now redirects to http://blog.metalabdesign.com and rest of the nav links are not working anymore. Good job, make your website completely unusable for a bit of PR.
Wow. This is disgusting. Even I create my own content and o own a small social network (2780 members). Unnacceptable. I'm speechless. http://www.thirdie.com
"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."
I love Metalabs site design as much as the next guy, but I don't think that this is what Picasso meant when he said - "Good artists copy, great artists steal."
The Metalab guys should be happy about all the free press they are now getting.
Not saying that Metalab did this, but I wonder if there is a PR lesson here. Anonymously upload your companies design to a popular FOSS project and then pretend to be all dejected when you 'find out'. Air your grievance publicly and boom, instant PR!
This situation smears the good name that Mozilla has built in spreading the values of open source software. It is shameful for Mozilla to have put itself as a pilferer of design. Take it down and hire them to do the work.
There's a reason why everyone calls the Mozilla Foundation the "MoFo". This is the same entity that told Debian they couldn't patch security problems and still call the browser Firefox. Let's just say... a clue is not something the MoFo has.
I can't believe Mozilla would do such a thing, but as a designer I am on Metalab's side, it is unacceptable that any company would do such a thing. Mozilla needs to issue an apology and pay for the design if the intend to clear in any way what they have done.
It is also sad that a talented team like mozilla's couldn't come up with an idea of their own or at least pay for it.
On another note, is there a way for Metalab to take legal actions towards Mozilla?
