An HN member created a new blog thing; invite only; very designery. They were trying to build a brand for great writing. The way it was presented to the HN audience was sub-optimal - "Here's the great new shiny thing. You can't use it, you're all stupid."

Someone very quickly ripped it off.

There was intense discussion. Some people felt it's fair game to rip off the design. Other people felt it was a poor copy. Others were angry that it was such a blatant rip off (especially because it was so bad).

I've tried to describe this as neutrally as possible, but I understand it will sound pretty biased.

Here's an example of

a svbtle page: http://benyu.org/net-worth

obtvse page: http://jackdempsey.me/migrating-to-obtvse

wp-svbtle: http://wp-svbtle.themeskult.com/

I believe obtvse at the time of the dispute was more directly ripping off svbtle than it is now, but I could be misremembering.

The unintentional pretentiousness of svbtle was amusing at the time and I can remember the urge to create a clone and replace the dammned kudos hover trap with a fontBomb[1].

1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4208102

See here http://howells.ws/posts/view/93/svbtle-vs-obtvse-and-on-copy...