Daring Fireball rip-off ripped off
Speaking of bloggers, plagiarism and content theft, earlier today high profile Mac blogger John Gruber posted news 
of a site that had completely ripped off Daring Fireball’s CSS and design.
The site looked like this:
Click image for a full-sized view
The only changes, John noted, were the removal of his name and copyright statement from the code.
By tonight the look of the site had changed . How the change happened I do not know, whether by natural contrition or some form of self-regulation among the blogging community.
In his apology the blogger said that “the site was meant to be a sandbox (test) site and was not supposed to [be] public-facing.”
He continues: “My apologies mostly to John - for not asking permission to tinker with his code and also to his readers - for any confusion.”
Daring Fireball is a very fine source of Mac news and opinion. Its Linked List elevates “human aggregation” to an art form. You can subscribe to the site , not only supporting John’s own writing but keeping alive the greater dream that quality can succeed in the online world.
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June 12th, 2006 at 3:20 am
so an individual copied another site whose own site is not for profit?
i really dont care.
oh i wish my world’s largest problem was bloggers copying each other.
i remember i nicer internet a long time ago where getting each other’s code was a nice way of learning…sigh
June 12th, 2006 at 5:14 am
There’s a difference between using code for example of technique and ripping off design.
June 12th, 2006 at 7:01 am
Well, yeah, it’s less creative.
Plagiarism and intellectual loot
http://last-straw.net/2006/06/plagiarism-and-intellectual-loot/
June 12th, 2006 at 11:53 am
Great to read this ended well.
I love Daring Fireball, but it really does need more articles. I was going to buy a membership to support John and his attempt to make a go at this full time.
But I decided to wait it out and see what was different and better with John working full time on the site before I spent my money on the effort.
Sadly, I am glad I decided to wait. I love John’s writing, but weeks on end with just links is not worth a membership to me.
I would love a regular publishing window from Daring Fireball. New articles on Tuesday and Friday, or something of that ilk. The links are nice filler, but they are just that.
I wish John well and hope Daring Fireball is a huge success, both for John and for the internet. But more articles is really a must.
June 12th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
I agree with SpyDone. I find Gruber’s writings enjoyable, but his claim that he’s blogging “full time” is puzzling to me. He almost never posts more than two mini-essays per month, and there are days where he adds nothing to his “Linked List.” On average, he only seems to post 10-15 linked list items per week, or about two a day. That’s full-time work? There are definitely bloggers I’d subscribe to, but Gruber isn’t one of them — he doesn’t generate anywhere near enough content. I think it’s great that so many people bought memberships, but IMHO it seems more like a vanity exercise than a content subscription.
June 12th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
What does quantity have to do with it? Surely if the price suits the quantity and quality it doesn’t matter what the quantity is?