LayerVault, a version control service for design files, posts about its product features, flat design, and its Rails engineering.
HN links it for the 'Flat Design Era' post, which sparked discussion of flat design, and for product features like Dropbox sync and Asset Handoff.
To add some context, LayerVault posted a blog post outlining "The Flat Design Era"[1]. While the term has been used before in various context, to me, the post seemed to ignite a lot of discussion in the tech/design community about flat design (and by relation, skeumorphs, etc.,)
LayerVault is a vocal proponent of the "Flat UI" approach and uses it almost as a signature look and feel for their product. In the follow up discussions, the blog post author has said that no post or discussion fully understands what he meant [2].
I can't read the takedown letter or discussion where I am (for some reason github is blocked). But based on what I've seen, the kit is similar to LayerVault's approach to employing Flat UI. That combined with the blogpost, I wouldn't be surprised if LayerVault felt that their look and feel was infringed upon. Obviously, this doesn't mean that they actually were infringed upon in the eye of the law, even if the kit was derived from LayerVault.
As a designer, I can sympathize with LayerVault's issue with the kit (I'm making assumptions), but with such a design, I really wonder how valid their complaint is within the law.
[1]http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/32267022219/flat-interface-design
[2]Designer News thread that I have no link to at the moment.
They do, but compatibility isn't perfect and fixing anything requires huge reverse engineering knowledge or prior knowledge.
See:
"... PSD is not a good format. PSD is not even a bad format. Calling it such would be an insult to other bad formats...
If there are two different ways of doing something, PSD will do both, in different places. It will then make up three more ways no sane human would think of, and do those. PSD makes inconsistency an art form...
Earlier, I tried to get a hold of the latest specs for the PSD file format. To do this, I had to apply to them for permission to apply to them to have them consider sending me this sacred tome. This would have involved faxing them a copy of some document or other, probably signed in blood. I can only imagine that they make this process so difficult because they are intensely ashamed of having created this abomination..."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=575122
https://layervault.tumblr.com/post/56891876898/psdrb
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6129237
You can only have success in building interfaces if you first understand who your users are, and what problem you're solving for them.
The author compares the benefits of flashy, spread-out interfaces and CLI. The truth is that both have incredible value in the right contexts. The tricky part is making an interface that is easy to pick up, but powerful enough for power users.
If you deeply understand your users you can build adaptive user interfaces[0]. LayerVault experimented[1] with the idea of progressive reduction—stripping down UI elements as the user becomes more familiar so they can work more efficiently.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_user_interface
[1]http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/42361566927/progressive-reduction
LayerVault is a great tool if you want to keep your design files version controlled and nicely organized, which is the primary function. They have also introduced a handoff feature (http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/82302518939/introducing-asset-handoff) that is somewhat closer to Avocode.
But Avocode aims to be your tool of choice when it comes to designer->developer interaction and VICE VERSA. Many services often forget those developers who must code the same parts over and over again.
I think Kelly Sutton (of the late layervault) figured this out with his fork of sparkle, called "autosparkle" - https://github.com/layervault/Sparkle . I haven't personally integrated it into my app yet, but supposedly it makes updates a much more silent process - which is really important for 'always-on' tray apps like layervault was, or the one I'm making.
Here's their announcement of it from 2013: http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/50501747774/open-sourced-autosparkle
Yes, good design is how it works. We aren't against skeuomorphism and don't think flat is opposite of it either. In fact there can even be flat skeumorphism. I think Layervault's post on flat interface design, and Sacha Grief's flat pixels post are the best out there to read up on what IS flat design. Or Almost flat design. http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/32267022219/flat-interface-design
http://sachagreif.com/flat-pixels/