Drawar

Yeah I originally thought "making something similar and open-sourcing is probably not that evil", but looking at this it leverages the name you chose for Svbtle, the design is near (exactly?) pixel-perfect, it leverages the Kudos device, and apparently even copy/pastes code from the original.

If we think of Svbtle not as a blogging engine, but as a company with various commentators/channels, this is quite obviously ethically wrong, and possibly legally wrong (I can't imagine I'd last long making a site called "BBBC" and using all BBC branding).

Having said all that, it validates the demand for Svbtle - why not start charging for people to use the design (perhaps with some distinct branding to indicate they're not part of the official "Svbtle network").

// Some afterthoughts

It's clear that all design is about inspirations, and you can see the Drawar (http://drawar.com/) inspiration in Svbtle. However, just because Svbtle clearly has design influences doesn't mean simply copying Svbtle without making your own changes (just as Svbtle has) is okay, particularly when you are stealing their brand name as well.

I'm not sure if Svbtle itself is WP-based, or whether the admin section is similar, so perhaps some innovation has been made there? Nonetheless, an effort to distinguish itself (and potentially acknowledging the original influence) seems important.

By your logic, spam is also working fine because the people who invest money into it are getting the ROI they desire.

Anyway, I'm hardly a "single" voice on the topic:

http://www.drawar.com/articles/dont-let-ads-kill-your-site/61/

And here's a non-anonymous blogger who is/has spoken on the same topic at SXSW. I didn't make it there, but I'm looking forward to a synopsis or a video.

"Online Advertising: Losing the Race to the Bottom"

http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/617

"How individuals and groups can maintain some shred of dignity and support themselves by creating ad and sponsorship programs that benefit and respect publishers, readers and advertisers. Presented by John Gruber of Daring Fireball and Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners and The Deck Network."

(emphasis mine)

Took me until I saw the Disqus comments at the bottom to realize this blog was not on svbtle.com. The theme is here:

http://github.com/gravityonmars/wp-svbtle

From the github readme:

> Isn't this unoriginal?

> Yes, in the same way svbtle is unoriginal. See the original "inspiration" for svbtle. (link: http://drawar.com/)

At that, I raise an eyebrow. Yes, dcurtis' svbtle does look like it may have been inspired by drawar, or any other blog theme with a persistent left-hand column. It's certainly not nearly as original as it is simply well-executed.

But wp-svbtle copied the style & spacing of svbtle down to just about the pixel-level. Legal or not, it's pretty blatantly ripping-off the brand dcurtis is trying to establish, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

then that's where the confusion comes from!

drewblaisdell said (to Dustin):

> How different would you say his parody of your site is than your site is of http://drawar.com/ ?

I said I don't see how Svbtle is a copy of drawar.com:

> I don't see it; the whole workflow - draft to publish columns and such - is the same at drawar, or?

So I do not think that Svbtle is a rip-off of drawar.com.

Now if there's anything unique about Svbtle compared to the blogging systems I've personally used, its the draft thing (as explained in the Svbtle article we all read here on HN a few hours before this one).

My tumblr has drafts; but its not this trello-like list organising thing. As Dustin says, it helps make stories happen and posts get written.

Yes, everything is copyright its creator.

I guess my point was that all that doesn't matter if the original design doesn't exhibit enough originality (I used the term 'novel').

To give an example: if I have an A4 page with left aligned text, that looks very similar to any other A4 page with left aligned text that happens to use the same font size and line height.

In the case at hand, the design wasn't even dcurtis', he presumably took it from http://drawar.com/
Or maybe not?

With a design so simple, similarity by coincidence can't be ruled out.
I wouldn't be surprised if another dozen websites existed that exhibited a /very/ similar design.

It's a theme that you otherwise would not have access to unless you're part of the elite few that are actually allowed to post at Svbtle. I like the way it looks, personally.

It's on Github: https://github.com/gravityonmars/wp-svbtle

And from that page:

Isn't this unoriginal?

Yes, in the same way svbtle is unoriginal. See the original ["inspiration" for svbtle] (http://drawar.com)