Show HN: LibreBoard – An open-source clone of Trello

https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/

by mquandalle • 12 years ago

243 97 12 years ago

ericskiff• 12 years ago

While I love the idea of an open source tool that explores the same problems that Trello does and potentially even solves it in a very similar way, I have to admit that the exact look and feel being copied here seems like a blatant rip off. Am I off base? Can anyone speak to the copyright aspect of copying a solution and design so fully?

silverlight• 12 years ago

It's one thing to have two ways of doing kanban boards, but there is definitely very much a "look and feel" copying going on here that I'm not sure is legal.

r3bl• 12 years ago

There is a discussion started in a GitHub issue about this.

I must suggest you a comment by the project's co-owner:

https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/issues/92#issuecomm...

He went a little too far in his argument, but he does make a good point.

EDIT:

They've received a DMCA takedown notice from GitHub:

https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/issues/92#issuecomm...

cheald4• 12 years ago

"In the meantime, please clone the repository on your local computer so we can have a lot of copies of it."

Wow. That's uh. Something.

weego• 12 years ago

I also believe that it's not in Trello Inc. interest to try to censure us because of the Streisand effect, and it would be overly complex

What a thoroughly loathsome and naive attitude to have.

danlec2• 12 years ago

See https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/commit/348081d9eca4..., where they check a beautified version of Trello's CSS file into their MIT licensed project.

wpietri3• 12 years ago

Great find. If that's as bad as it sounds, that could make an it an illegal derivative work, which would make for an easy DMCA claim.

wpietri3• 12 years ago

I'd love to hear from somebody who knows better, but my understanding is that the legal aspects of look-and-feel ripoffs have never been settled in court.

In one sense, that doesn't matter. Trello has way more time and money, so I'm sure they can sue the LibreBoard people with enough vigor that the LibreBoard folks will decide it's much easier to come up with their own look. Whether or not LibreBoard could eventually win the suit is irrelevant if they can't afford to go the distance in court.

Of course, it probably doesn't look great for Trello to sue a couple of random dudes, so I could see them letting it go. Or perhaps just calling them up and talking developer-to-developer about how this makes them feel as creators and asking LibreBoard to do their own work.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

Actually they were litigated as part of the Lotus v. Borland suit which a distant cousin of mine (same name, common ancestor is like 4 generations back) was involved in, I sometimes get inquiries)

[1] http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/int-p...

ljk• 12 years ago

Not an expert here, but isn't that how the task-managing board should look like? The first time I saw Trello I thought it looked very similar to the JIRA Agile boards by Atlassian....

franciscop• 12 years ago

I completely agree. I think they're looking for trouble, they crossed that line between "for fun" and "messing with a great website".

huhtenberg2• 12 years ago

Even setting aside the legality of this rip, doesn't the ethical aspects of it bother anyone as well?

Designing a simple and functional UI is really hard. It takes ages to sift through possible options, discard the fluff, iterate over the details and while the end result is endearingly simple, it ends up fronting a shitload of sweat and tears. And then someone just waltzes in waving their Libre flag and the middle finger to lift the whole thing just as if it's a no big deal. I don't know about you, but this really pisses me off. This is as disrespectful as it gets towards people who did the original work and it also reflects really poorly on the O/S in general.

streptomycin• 12 years ago

That doesn't bother me. You could make a similar argument about some aspect of nearly every piece of open source software. Web design isn't special. What about C# vs Mono, Matlab vs Octave, Unix vs GNU/Linux, etc.?

(Just to be clear... directly copying assets and code is not cool.)

mindcrime• 12 years ago

"Good artists borrow, great artists steal".

That said, yeah, I have a problem with stealing actual source code, even if it is "just" CSS and HTML or whatever. But as far as cribbing the "look and feel" stuff, I personally don't have a problem with it. And to the extent that I know anything about the legal aspects, I thought there was some old case involving Lotus or Adobe or somebody, that established that copying "look and feel" is legal?

Edit: Here's more on the legal aspect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_and_feel#Lawsuits_over

markdown• 12 years ago

If you want to see a completely original UI with not a single thing "borrowed" from elsewhere, my 5yr old has some drawings to show you.

This specific case takes it too far, there's no doubt about that. But you can be sure that the Trello designer was heavily influenced by those that came before him. UI designers spend half their time looking at UI's designed by others to see what works and what doesn't.

In fact, more often than not, UI design should be copied. You don't design a completely different light switch just because you want to be original. Function before form.

yellowapple2• 12 years ago

From what I can tell, they're working on a differentiated (improved, even) UI/L&F [0]. A lot of the concepts (including the one they seem to be working with) are based on mockups for improved versions of Trello's UI that were rejected by Trello, and it's apparent that non-Trello kanban software is being referenced as well.

[0] https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/issues/94

codereflection• 12 years ago

Trello is free, so is this meant to complete with Trello Gold?

Sir_Cmpwn• 12 years ago

There are reasons beyond money to use free (as in freedom) software.

thirdtruck3• 12 years ago

It doesn't have to compete on just price. Trello is free (and I use it constantly), but using it still means having all of your data on remote servers. I can't use it at my job, for example, due to legitimate security concerns, but we could (in theory) use this new software instead.

Spooky23• 12 years ago

I can't use Trello at work because some of the data that would be placed there may have a restrictive information classification.

I'd love to be able to buy a different tier of Trello service instead of stickers, but an open source clone will do too!

GETah2• 11 years ago

We've got an application that is very similar to trello (www.iferapp.com) that we are planning to offer in self hosted mode - we are going into beta very soon.

GETah2• 11 years ago

And here it is selfhosted.iferapp.com

pxlpshr• 12 years ago

I don't endorse a blatant rip off of the UI and the assets. You can do better than that. Otherwise, good job on the development effort and open source initiative.

thirdtruck3• 12 years ago

It is a blatant imitation[1]. At the same time, the design is incredibly refined, so there's only so much room to move away from without making sacrifices solely for the sake of differentiation.

EDIT: [1] According to a comment below, it's a straight-up copy of the CSS. That goes well beyond "blatant imitation."

tghw• 12 years ago

Imitation is different than directly copying the CSS. They copied the CSS.

rcarmo• 12 years ago

Wow. Just wow. Two years ago we had an internal row about people using Trello and possibly exposing internal data (which we attempted to solve through various means).

Having this as a Docker container is _great_ for in-house use (although I haven't checked the internals and am not very enthusiastic about their using Node...)

imslavko• 12 years ago

It is a great example of a bigger open-source Meteor apps in a wild along-side with Telescope (http://www.telesc.pe/) which is also well documented and is extensible.

austenallred• 12 years ago

I love the idea of open source tools, but this goes way too far. This isn't just rebuilding a popular concept, this is taking code that was written by a for-profit company and blatantly stealing it. There's an important difference.

The earlier versions of this repo still used the Trello logo. Trello's CSS is blatantly used, even using trellicons, the custom icon font created by Trello. The entire front-end is completely, blatantly stolen.

If you want to build LibreOffice as a free alternative to Microsoft Word, that's great. But taking Microsoft Word's code and uploading it into an open source GitHub repository? That crosses the line. I don't care what legal ramifications there are or what constitutes copyright infringement or what is legally actionable (heaven knows the law is often off base from what is right/moral/ethical, especially in software). That's another discussion, but this is messed up.

Can you create a task management system in Meteor.js that is inspired by "agile" methodology and similar to Trello? Sure. But blatantly taking code, especially without even putting a creative spin of your own on it, is just plain wrong.

nadams2• 12 years ago

I'm on the fence on this one - I could argue either way (I could probably work a books worth of material).

However, I think it is interesting to note that the idea of "stealing" a design has been done for years. I just don't think many people do it to websites.

Examples - there are companies that bundle premade controls that look pretty darn close to the designs in paid software. Here is an example of one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYzjJHtldec

They may just wrap Windows API - but I've seen ribbon interfaces running on Windows 2K with VB6.

Even if one would argue that falls into "fair use" - consider two more examples:

Zelda Classic[1] - they used original artwork from the original Nintendo game and re-created the game on the PC

Mari0[2] - the original Mario but with portals (including level design and graphics)

Now from what I can tell - Nintendo doesn't shutdown/care about these people because they aren't making money off the games. But if these games aren't infringing on Nintendo's copyright - I don't know what would be.

[1] http://armageddongames.net/showthread.php?96754-Zelda-Classi... [2] - http://stabyourself.net/mari0/

tedunangst3• 12 years ago

A year ago HN lost its mind after full screen Mario was shutdown. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6703002

zokier2• 12 years ago

There are lots of semi-related issues raised in your post.

Generally copying/cloning a design is legally OK, but copying the implementation/execution of that design is not OK. This is well demonstrated in the font industry. You can copy a typeface as long as you do it "cleanly" (ie by not reverse engineering the font files), which is why there are lots of cheap copies of common fonts. This is probably the most relevant aspect for this project. They can copy the look'n'feel of Trello as perfectly as they can, but they can not copy Trello assets, CSS etc.

Then there is the Ribbon. Being software Microsoft has it patented which makes clones of Ribbon more in the gray area. On the other hand the enforceability of such patents is somewhat questionable.

Lastly the games. In addition to copyright infringement I suspect there is also risk of trademark infringement. What makes trademarks interesting that they are thought to need enforcing to remain valid, so companies generally are less willing to a blind eye to tm infringements. Also unlike copyright which considers where the work comes from, trademarks generally consider only what the work looks like and if it can be confused to the original trademark.

DanBC• 12 years ago

I just don't think many people do it to websites.

The now dead "pirate sites" had galleries of comparisons between an original site and a rip-off of that site. Some of them were blatant, even hot-linking assets. (A weirdly risky strategy with goatse potential).

davexunit• 12 years ago

There's nothing wrong with making something that looks very similar to Trello, though there is something wrong with using their CSS and icons. Why does it need to be a "creative spin"? The UI works well, so copy it (by writing your own implementation, of course).

mwg662• 12 years ago

If the authors have genuinely copied CSS and icons (I haven't checked) then I would expect Trello Inc. to pursue the authors for copyright infringement (justifiably).

The point is to be very precise with the criticism. Is the work stolen (protected by copyright law) or is it just a convincing clone?

syrnick• 12 years ago

They have clearly original Trello content checked in the repository.

300bps• 12 years ago

Hmm. I've spent some time making my own Trello clone but mine has changed a little more than the one in the OP. First of all, mine is called Trellu. Check it out and let me know your thoughts:

http://goo.gl/n8Ca0M

Jugurtha4• 12 years ago

Hmmm, the intro video of the founder explaining Trellu is weird. He reminds me of a cropped Joel Spolsky. I don't know why.

ndesaulniers• 12 years ago

Looks like they got a DMCA notice: https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/issues/92#issuecomm...

hysan• 12 years ago

I want to agree with this sentiment, but after watching how gamedev has progressed in the mobile space, I can't find a good argument against this. Straight up cloning has become common practice in today's industry (assets are switched but with striking similarity to the original), yet I don't see as many people frowning on this practice anymore. At least outside of tech circles.

So yeah, to those of us who understand what goes into development, cloning is ethically reprehensible. But once you step outside of the tech world, I believe the ethics of this become much more murky.

gitaarik• 12 years ago

I like it. I'm using Trello now, but the interface doesn't work that convenient on mobile I think. So I was thinking to make a client of my own using the Trello API, but this way I can change the original interface to my likings, and hopefully other's likings, so it gets merged :).

EDIT: A lot of people seem to think it looks to much like Trello. While I agree that the interface looks strikingly similar (or maybe even just exactly the same), I think the intentions are not to evil. How can libre software have evil intentions? Of course it can, but since it's libre and everybody can read and change the sourcecode, it likely won't happen.

And, in the end, isn't that why we have libre software at all? We want to have control over the software, instead of the software having control over us, right?

tedunangst3• 12 years ago

If your "independent" clone is hot linking assets from the original, you probably have less control than you think. Ironically, Trello probably knows (or could learn) the IP of every person to use this.

thedufer2• 12 years ago

As far as I can tell, they're not actually hotlinking anything - they just copied it once into their repo. Did I miss something?

rev_bird• 12 years ago

How can libre software have evil intentions?

This might not be a particularly nuanced view, but I'm totally fine with non-libre software being used to make a profit, if there's a market for it and there isn't some kind of extortionary force at work. Taking the code and "liberating" it could be considered nefarious because it directly undermines a company's ability to profit off of intellectual property that is entirely theirs.

zokier2• 12 years ago

While I agree that the interface looks strikingly similar (or maybe even just exactly the same), I think the intentions are not to evil. How can libre software have evil intentions?

It is not evil, it just stupid. Lots of effort now is wasted because they made the stupid mistake to use illegitimate assets. And of course stupidity does not absolve responsibility.

And, in the end, isn't that why we have libre software at all? We want to have control over the software, instead of the software having control over us, right?

That is exactly why it is so important to do these sorts of things by the book. By crossing the line authors of this project gave away large chunk of the control they (and us by extension) had.

sergiotapia• 12 years ago

Fantastic! Gotta love the people who salivate at the mouth with talks of litigation. Just tweak the UI and this product is a great alternative. Congratulations on your launch

Globz• 12 years ago

Wow...this looks like a clone of Trello, sorry I cannot support this.

I have been using Trello for a long time and I refuse to give credits to someone who blatantly stole the assets, code, etc. and didn't even care to AT LEAST add a different touch to the project. I love open source but this project is off the limit concerning copyrights.

zo12• 12 years ago

What code did they steal, exactly? They re-implemented all of the functionality, and I'm not sure they took take the JS either. So at this point, it leaves CSS + Look&Feel, and I think they took some icons, though that seems like more of an oversight as it's still a young project from the looks of it.

I don't see this as any different to such works as OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe) and CorsixTH (Theme Hospital). Both open-source remakes of the popular closed-source games. Obviously they don't bundle the media (graphics, etc), and just ask end-installers to point to the installation files of the originals. You could argue that hot-linking css is quite similar to that, though not exactly.

The real problem is them putting this not-yet-sanitized-of-all-copyright-infringment onto a public-facing site with a domain and everything. If it was still on Github, then that's fine. But they jumped the bandwagon a little too soon, and people are escalating it incredibly quickly.

cheald4• 12 years ago

The CSS is distributed in the Github repo, ostensibly under an open-source license, which the project maintainer has no right to use, distribute, or relicense. It's about as clear a case of copyright infringement as they come.

(And that's not even mentioning that reusing someone else's CSS likely requires you to reuse their markup, too.)

Widdershin• 12 years ago

https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/commit/348081d9eca4...

bdcravens2• 12 years ago

Hot-linking has a very real and ongoing cost associated with it.

nautical• 12 years ago

Just the CSS for god sake ! ..... there is much more to it than that ...

cheald4• 12 years ago

Well, it shouldn't be too hard for the author to write original 'Just CSS' then.

janus• 12 years ago

It's so sad that such great work can bring so many negative repercussions just because the project creator's decided to blatantly rip off Trello's assets.

The project would be under such a different light had they decided style it themselves... I think they're so much better than this.

nazgul• 12 years ago

But are they? They did this, so unless you think they're completely naive (which in itself seems completely naive) you have to see fault here.

kjs3• 11 years ago

What "great work". He took someone else's work and said "look what I did".

lucio• 11 years ago

They should rewrite the CSS from scratch.

But for everything else is seems it is original work. And that's a big part of the project.

Jugurtha4• 12 years ago

Reading all what is said, I can't keep myself from having words spring into my head: UNIX, GNU, Linux, Minix...

I can use grep, cat, ls and so many commands on so many different machines... Same names, same functions, and the same UI (black screen, anyone?).

tedunangst3• 12 years ago

Was GNU grep implemented by somebody writing the code or running "cp unix/grep.c gnu/grep.c"?

Jugurtha4• 12 years ago

To the best of my knowledge, the people behind this project wrote code.

I don't know if it's a Bash script containing your one liner, though... But they seem to have their own code. (I don't think Trello's code is freely available).

Bear in mind, I'm not for or against. I'm just putting the thing in perspective and to be compared with what happened throughout History.

When I do Ctrl+K, Ctrl+T, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+Tab in Firefox or Chrome, they all have the same side effects.

cstrahan• 12 years ago

Nice! I'm glad to see Cap'n Proto and Sandstorm seeing some love.

For those not in the know:

https://sandstorm.io/ https://capnproto.org/

(I'm not affiliated in anyway, just a fan of Kenton Varda's work, which also include Protocol Buffers)

agmcleod2• 12 years ago

Been kinda building a trello-like app myself. But it's far more simplistic in features, and i'm trying to build it so it's way more mobile friendly. I have the front end as open source, and the web back end as closed. Not sure why I am doing it this way, but I hope to put out a proprietary iOS app for it at some point.

More or less started it to learn ReactJS. http://gitub.com/agmcleod/desert

ay1n• 12 years ago

There's typo in the URL, should be: https://github.com/agmcleod/desert

agmcleod2• 11 years ago

Ah thanks :)

nickysielicki2• 12 years ago

I don't understand the ethical dilemma many of you are raising.

I've never believed there's such a thing as plagiarism of style, only things like algorithms and methodologies. If someone makes a wierd looking chair, and I like it and make my own, and they try to tell me I'm stealing their ideas they can fuck off, especially if I'm not selling this chair but just using it for myself and helping others build their own chairs, too.

Style sheets are within these same bounds as far as I care. They're not intellectual property or content. There's nothing profound about aesthetics. No hard work in refining it. It's something that's composed entirely of intuition and trying to copyright that seems immoral to me. CSS is dressing, not content, and dressing is the only thing they have stolen from trello.

nhayden• 12 years ago

The case for infringement would be very weak to non-existent if they recreated the look and feel writing the CSS themselves from scratch. The issue is they took the original product and modified some spacing and other minor details and redistributed it. Any written work like this is copyrightable.

nickysielicki2• 12 years ago

You're forgetting that they wrote the entire backend as a part of this.

dewey• 12 years ago

"Yaşar received an email from Trello, Inc. asking him to rename the Metrello project. Do you have any idea for a new name?" [1]

Apparently it was even called *trello a few weeks ago, so they are definitely aware of that project already. Curious why it wasn't DMCA'ed earlier already.

[1] http://crater.io/posts/8azTCHojZq8CoJpAR

vohof• 12 years ago

I had to check for dirt on my monitor on that one.

yellowapple2• 12 years ago

I think if this had been actually clean-room reverse-engineered, it wouldn't be getting the backlash it's getting.

The fact that the LibreBoard devs outright ripped off Trello's CSS and HTML is a bit disappointing. Perhaps with the DMCA notice they got, they'll consider scrapping the current UI and coming up with something a bit more, you know, not blatantly copy-pasted.

That said, being able to use something reasonably-Trello-like for internal use (with data under the control of the entity using it) is a fantastic idea, and the fact that LibreBoard does that reasonably well (from what I can tell) gives me some hope that they'll manage to pull themselves out of this muck.

EDIT: And apparently there is, in fact, an effort to actually create a UI that isn't a blatant Trello ripoff: https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/issues/94

vdm• 12 years ago

So now we get to set WIP limits?

fiatjaf2• 12 years ago

Well, apparently they reimplemented all the logic by their own, they just copied the visual from Trello, with a single CSS appropriation. They shouldn't have copied the CSS, but they can still "uncopy" it and write their own styles.

peeyek• 12 years ago

They received DMCA takedown notice from github because the user interface https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard/commit/14e6b2fb9149...

dogecoinbase• 12 years ago

For the curious, they're hosting their rework of the UI off github in order to comply with their DMCA takedown: http://git.libreboard.com/libreboard/libreboard/

fiatjaf2• 12 years ago

Some time ago I made Youfle[1]. I was trying to make a Trello clone, but for structured data, like a direct interface to a document database that could be used (and/or extended) by not-so-simple but yet data management contexts. The idea was to make something versatile like a spreadsheet and yet powerful as a database. The design resembles Trello (and, differently from Libreboard, it has card drag-and-drop and horizontal scrolling with click-and-drag capabilities). It works offline and saves data to PouchDB (IndexedDB on your browser, probably).

Documents should be written in YAML, but they also accept free text. The custom indexing, map and reduce functions, pagination, querying and other UI features were not implemented yet. To edit a card, double-click on its title. Adding the ID of other card as a value to any property of a card you create a link between the two, which you can see if you click on the body of the card after you stop editing.

If anyone has feedback to share about this, please let me know. The code is at GitHub[2].

[1] http://fiatjaf.alhur.es/youfle/ [2]: https://github.com/fiatjaf/youfle

Show HN: LibreBoard – An open-source clone of Trello

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