Thank god I'm not alone

I'm really glad I'm not the only one who is speaking up when the smell coming from 37 Signals' direction starts to be a bit on the stinky side.

He's actually criticizing their posts on startups (which I usually enjoy, actually) but ends with this criticism:

If you’ve ever used their apps, you know how weak-sauce they are. So weak is their sauce that the first demo of Google App Engine was a quickly-made clone of their Campfire application. 37 Signals whined about and resulted in it being taken down. What a bunch of jokers.

I actually love 37 Signals' "weak-sauce" (translation: simple) apps... :-) I'm a paid user of most (and a lot of my clients pay for Campfire). I do agree though that it's ridiculous to build the absolute simplest apps possible (their claim) and then deny others the right to also build simple solutions that compete with their own.

Image from here:

If HuddleChat was a ripoff of Campfire then Campfire was a rip-off of iChat (or pick a more similar chat program, you have tons to choose from) which was a rip-off of mIRC which was a rip-off of... BBS chat?

Chat programs usually have history that scrolls off the top, include a text entry box, and allow file transfers . This is true of Campfire, HuddleChat, IRC, almost any major chat app I can think of. This is nothing new and 37 Signals doesn't own (or have a copyright for) the "concept" of group chat.

I know HuddleChat is old news, but this is my first opportunity to blog on it. :-)

Comments

[rick]

Chat apps also have a history of about 1000 other useless features that get in the way. Thankfully, campfire kept a lot of that out. It's naive to think that it's simple, so anyone can just knock out a chat clone, or a basecamp clone in a weekend. A lot of thought and design went into it. Hell, anyone can clone pastie in a weekend. But, you obviously put a lot of thought into the design, so you've done the work for any would-be cloners. It's still the best damn paste site IMO.

I don't think 37s actually pursued any legal action. I believe JF just made a comment in some interview, and the response from other fan(boys) lead to the decision to take it down. It's no different than when "Web Designer Person" posts about some "asshat" ripping off "Web Designer Person's Crowning Achievement", and then asshat getting their email box flooded by angry responses from "Web Designer Person fanboys".

[Kevin Milden]

If I make a search engine should it work like Google or Yahoo? Enough said.

[toological]

That calendar app that 37signals is selling.... looks feature for feature, design for design, color for color, exactly like Apple's iCalendar.

Sheet of paper design: I'm pretty sure linkedin.com had that design before them.