At what point does inspiration become imitation? Clearly Curebit stepped over the line in this case, but it's undeniable that lots of startups draw design inspiration from other companies.
But at what point does this become unacceptable? For example, if Curebit merely used the same design, except hosting the assets on their own server, would that be okay? What if they just copied the layout but used their own styles, images, and fonts? Or if they just copied the button?
I'm sure that line is subjective, though one could argue linking to assets from someone else's servers is akin to theft (stealing bandwidth and money).
But I think the bigger story here is how Curebit handled their reaction to DHH. This could have all been avoided if Allan replied with a more humble stance.
Personally, I think DHH's initial reaction was on the strong side. If Allan had realized that, he wouldn't have tried to rationalize their actions. I suspect if he humbly apologized, then stayed quiet, he could have saved himself a lot of heartache.
And if was really troubled by DHH's reaction, he could have just emailed him privately. Getting into a pissing match in a public forum can sometimes backfire (even if you think that negative press can be good press).
When you are clearly in the wrong, a pissing match will never end well for you. Apologize sincerely, fix it, maybe offer some form of remediation, and let it blow over. You will never be able to make yourself look better if you try to make excuses or attack the grieved party.
Look at what Zynga did with FarmVille. At first, it was exactly like FarmTown. Same appearance, same menu layout, same gameplay. They weren't actually serving assets from FarmTown's servers, but besides that, the design was exactly the same.
Was this illegal? Probably not - design like this generally can't be copyrighted.
Was this successful? Yes - this sort of strategy led Zynga to be worth billions of dollars.
Was this ethical? I think intelligent people will differ.
Either way, DHH certainly uses his audience to attack people who come too close to the design of 37signals. A similar thing happened when Google launched Huddle, and DHH complained it was too similar to Campfire. In the end, Google rebranded it as a PR move and nobody cared any more.
Whether it's ethical or not, it certainly seems like a tactical PR mistake for a startup to annoy DHH this much.
Not only did Curebit copy 37Signals design in this case, they also essentially copied the source code. If Zynga was somehow able to decompile another game's source code, change the assets, and then sell it as their own, it would be just as wrong and potentially illegal as what Curebit did.
If I was DHH I would have replaced the images with something else. It is always entertaining what you can do to someone's site if they are foolish enough to pull images off your server. Or they could have blocked the hotlinking of the image.
What if Curebit had an important demo/presentation that was botched as a result of this? I think the response should be tailored to provide them with a learning opportunity rather than to hurt their startup. A private naming/shaming like betageek suggested would probably do the trick.
From a purely artistic standpoint, imitation is a large piece of the modern creation process, if only because of it's increased use in modernism/postmodernism. Everyone's influenced by someone or something, it's just the way things work.
In terms of what is acceptable, I tend to lean towards the notion that it's fine for someone to be inspired, or imitate as long as they've added their own artistic flare/soul to the piece and it's not just a forgery. As in they've only imitated a part of the piece, and not it's entirety. The issue with this whole process though is, art is subjective.
But at what point does this become unacceptable? For example, if Curebit merely used the same design, except hosting the assets on their own server, would that be okay? What if they just copied the layout but used their own styles, images, and fonts? Or if they just copied the button?