8 November 06
This morning I got a little pissed off. I was reading my feeds and saw a post from the rather nice Steve Tucker about his new Javascript Structured Data Search. The post is actually quite interesting in the way it talks about data structure and findability. When I tried the demo, I had a “waiiiit a minute” moment when I realised the functionality was near enough the same as my jQuery plug-in, quickSearch except that Steve’s doesn’t need jQuery. What annoyed me the most is the fact there wasn’t an acknowledgement (and to Steve’s credit, there is one now).
Whilst I sit here, on my dinner break, with my beef soup from Eat, I wonder – is it such a bad thing that my idea has been copied and implemented in a different way? The internet is based on copying. All front end developers learn their skills from viewing the source of their favourite sites. I know I did. If browsers didn’t have ‘view source’, the Internet would not be the important tool that it is today.
Also, I think the quickSearch functionality is useful. In fact, I know it’s useful, I’m using it on a web application I’m building, so I shouldn’t be bothered that more people will implement similar style functionalities on more sites. The more people that see a quick search, the more people will use my plug-in. Win-win.
You could draw analogies to the music industry from this. The more people get to listen to your music, the more people will buy the music. I don’t want to be a web developer version of Metallica, do I now?
I’d be quite interested to hear people’s opinions on where we draw the line between stealing and modifying ideas (a topic that I’ve covered before) and where should credit be given for work.
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Yeah, exactly, it wasn’t a rip off (like this for example) as none of the code was taken from my plug-in. As you said – inspiration rather than copy/pasting.
The whole copying scenario is a wierd one to define, as ultimately it is down to opinion. I personally would see copying (in programming terms anyway) as a cut/paste job, or one built upon a cut/paste job. In this case it is not so.
I did forget to credit Rik for the inspiration and for that I made the amendment. But like Rik said, the internet wouldnt be where it is today without its open source nature.
Comment by J Phill on 8 November 2006, 14:02
I can definitely understand your frustration. I don’t really think it’s a bad thing that Steve expanded up your idea. As much as copying has become a problem on the web, it’s also a good thing that the web has allowed developers to build upon different (open source?) techniques. I think this is what makes the web so great.
The fact that he gave credit in his comments maybe says that he just forgot? Who knows. Never the less, it seems like this is a case of inspiration for more development, rather than outright copy/paste.