[Coefficient-devel] Fwd: Re: Coefficient

[Dylan E. <de...@cs...>]

Dylan Etkin
ISTC
+27 12 841 3200

>>> Dylan Etkin 2004/11/17 09:17:03 AM >>>
Hi Mike,

 I am terribly sorry about this. They say that imitation is the most
sincere form of flattery and that is all I truly meant by imitating the
JIRA issue tracker. When we decided to do an issue tracker we wanted to
emulate what we felt was an excellent product and we all thought that
was JIRA. We did have a graphic artist alter the icons to a degree but I
can totally see how that is not enough.

 I have removed the current release from sourceforge and I will
re-release the latest version with the issue tracker removed as a
short-term solution. We will then work to replace the icons as a first
step, and then will try to change the layout  before we re-release it.
You can take heart in the fact that our issue tracker is much less
feature rich and much more buggy than the actual JIRA product, but it is
true that we copied layout, most html and the graphics from your
product. Somehow we thought that being such an incomplete implementation
with a different back-end made it O.K. but I totally see that it is not
and am sorry.

 This issue tracker has actually been available for about a year but I
guess it has only now gotten attention. I really respect your support of
the open source community with your JIRA installations and other
initiatives and I do not want sour any future relationships we may have
with your organization.

  As to the comment on the serverside thread there is no association
with the user who posted it, and as I hope this email shows, it is not
an opinion shared by anyone on the coefficient team.

  Please let me know if these steps are sufficient. And once again I
would like to offer my apologies and try to sincerely express that theft
was not our intent, we truly were just trying to copy an excellent UI,
but it is now very clear that we crossed a line and I am sorry.

Sincere Apologies,

Dylan Etkin 

Dylan Etkin
ISTC
+27 12 841 3200

>>> Mike Cannon-Brookes <mi...@at...> 2004/11/17 04:32:37 AM
>>>
Hi there,

I'm emailing you because (according to the website) you're the 
Coefficient development team.

As you may know I am one of the two founders of Atlassian, and we make

the JIRA issue tracker.

Quite a few of our customers emailed to point us to this thread today:

    http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=29994 

First - I'd like to say up front that I'm a huge supporter of Open 
Source in general, and our company spends a lot of money and developer

time working on Open Source projects.

Second - I think the Coefficient idea is good, and the project itself 
looks like it's off to a good start - well done!

I would however like to voice my complaint about the way that a lot of

our interface and especially our intellectual property has been
'lifted' 
(to put it nicely). The icons used in your issue tracker are ours - 
plain and simple - I know that because I and our graphic designer drew

them. The screen layouts, help text, UI - even down to rendering bugs 
(!) - are identical in many places.

As a second point, I would also like to take serious issue with one of

the poster's in that thread (I'm not sure how associated they are with

the project)

 >> The icons are taken directly from Jira
 > Indeed. But i do not see a big deal in it.
 > If Attlassian will complain, icons can be easily replaced.

No - this is a big deal.

Please take this as my official complaint and notice that I would like

all of our icons and interface elements removed from Coefficient.

- to borrow something or check something in accidentally is one thing,
- to blatantly steal it, admit it and then not seem to care is quite 
another.

I hope this matter can be resolved amicably and quickly - if nothing 
else it makes Coefficient look extremely poor in the eyes of the Open 
Source world and I'm sure you don't want that either.

Please let me know what you intend to do about it all.

Cheers,
Mike
--
ATLASSIAN - http://www.atlassian.com

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