chrispederick.com
Web Developer Rip-Off
- Web Developer
- 59 Comments
- 3 years ago on August 23, 2005
Someone sent me an email the other day with a link to the AEVITA Web Inspector. Web Inspector is described as “an add-on component for your Internet Explorer browser…for testing and optimizing HTML pages without complexity”. It sounds like an equivalent to the Web Developer extension only for Internet Explorer instead of Firefox, but a quick glance at it’s home page reveals it is more of a rip-off than an equivalent.
Copied
The first thing I noticed was that the icons used in Web Inspector are identical to those in Web Developer. These icons were not created by me, but are part of the default Firefox themes on Windows and Mac OS X, and I believe these icons are copyrighted by Mozilla.
Looking at one of the Web Inspector screenshots it was clear that not only had the icons been taken from Web Developer, but that the menus had an almost identical structure in terms of naming and order, with only a few items added and removed.
I also noticed that most of the text on the Web Inspector home page had been copied from the Web Developer documentation. For example, from the Web Developer documentation:
The disable features allow the disabling of various browser behaviors including disabling the cache, JavaScript and CSS.
And from the Web Inspector home page:
The disable features allow the disabling of various browser behaviors including disabling the cache, JavaScript and CSS.
What is particularly amusing about this is that the text was copied verbatim even though there is no feature that disables the cache in Web Inspector! The Web Inspector home page also claims that the program allows “an unlimited number of configurable tools” and “custom sizes” in the resize feature, but these are features of the Web Developer extension and are not included in Web Inspector.
I downloaded and installed the program and it behaves in almost exactly the same way as the Web Developer extension. This makes me suspect that much of the logic was probably taken from my code, although this is most likely hard to prove as I would guess that the internal code of an Internet Explorer add-on is very different to that of a Firefox extension.
No Response
I sent AEVITA support a polite email pointing out what appear to me to be clear violations of the GNU General Public License that the Web Developer extension is distributed under and the copyright of the Mozilla icons. At the time of writing I have yet to receive a response.
I find it sad that there are people who would abuse open source software in this way and even charge $24.95 for a license. This is certainly not about trying to stop any competition for the Web Developer extension - I have always been fully supportive of the Web Accessibility Toolbar and link to it from the Web Developer documentation.
I am not sure what my next steps will be, but I will post any follow-ups here…
All links to the AEVITA web site are using the rel="nofollow" attribute.
Update: Asa Dotzler from Mozilla has picked up the story on his blog and is encouraging people to contact AEVITA and express disapproval.
Update 2: Web Inspector is also available from Download.com and ZDNet Downloads. Feel free to add your opinion to the user reviews of the tool.
Update 3: Davenport points out that Web Inspector appears to have been removed from the AEVITA web site. A screenshot of the removed page can be seen in my Flickr photos.
Update 4: Audoin points out that the AEVITA web site is now simply showing a “Bandwidth Limit Exceeded” message.
Update 5: The AEVITA web site is back up again and all references to the Web Inspector have been removed, although James says that the images can still be accessed by URL. AEVITA have not contacted me, but I now consider this matter closed and want to thank everybody for their support.
59 Comments
Ripping off the icons is probably enough to incure the wrath of MoFo. Send an email to Gerv.
As for violating the GPL, cloning software isn’t really covered by the GPL, especially considering that GNU was first and foremost a drop-in Unix clone. If they haven’t used any of your actual code then there’s not a lot of violation going on. Even the pathetic copy-monkeys of the Windows shareware world can probably edit the UI strings if pushed.
- Chris
Hehe - you are right, rdude. There clearly was some effort put into this which makes it even stranger to me that they wouldn’t have asked me for permission beforehand.
Chris C, thanks for the information - I’ll contact Gerv and see what he says. I figure the GPL doesn’t offer much protection, but it still seems dubious that they can do this.
Maybe the fact that they ripped off your documentation can be used to your advantage.
As Ben suggests, the fact that they ripped off your documentation could definitely be used about them. You automatically hold copyright on that material if you wrote it, and their use of it, or an obvious derivative, is a breach of copyright law, which you can use against them.
Chris I absolutely love your web developer extension. However, I think it would be a nice complimentary tool for Internet Explorer since there aren’t many plugins available to begin with. Even so, you deserve your credits and mentioning.
Oliver - I agree that an equivalent tool for Internet Explorer would be useful. I just don’t think making a blatant rip-off from open source software and then charging for it is the best way to go about it.
lets encourage them to make a Firefox version of ‘their’ toolbar, and lets see how much the code differs.
Sure, there might be some things to change for IE coding, but translating a good book is also way easier than writing a new one (given the idea is the same, the outcome may be very different).
It obvious that they didn’t want to copy your extension to get help or use it as a free documentation but create a straight copy for IE. With as less effort as possible. I mean… they even copied the documentation and used as their branding text. Come on - this is a 5 minutes doing, I mean, if they copid and tested the features they know themselves that they exist. And I doubt tehy saw WebDev the first time, so they should know what’s great. I mean, even writing this comment here took me probably longer than just writing an promotext on WebDev.
I wonder: If the images were released under GNU there wouldn’t be such a problem. GNU clearly sais that one may use the images if one mentiones the author and spreads them under the same license. However, Mozilla lists the GNU as an acceptable license. (For mozilla code, though). As far as I got it, GPL would apply if they copied the code, too.
If Mozilla (Firefox) is released under the GPL (or partly, I somehow remember at a tri license or something) then I don’t get why images don’t apply on the GPL, too?!
I am not sure about the copyright issues with the icons. I know that the Firefox logo is definitely copyrighted, but I am not sure if this extends to the icons in the default themes as well.
I have notified Mozilla about the icons and will leave them to decide if there are any copyright violations and any actions to take including whether I need to remove them from the Web Developer extension.
Aevita Web Inspector is an obvious rip-off of your great extension.
I find it disgusting that corporations steal and sell the work of other developers without giving them any credit. I’ll find some time to contact Aevita to express my disapproval like many others.
Anyway, continue the good work! Your extension has saved me from many headaches when building websites.
Note that they have a logo of the Association of Shareware Professionals on their page. You may want to contact them about this…
Good point, Michael. I will contact them and see what they think about the situation.
I hope Mozilla Corporation gets on the case about this theft from the Mozilla community.
Best,
Tsee
Aside from the obvious on the matter - meaning, gee, that sucks - There is, however, a temptation to buy the damn thing. I can remember countless of times “Gee, I wish they had something like this for IE” since in most cases, a particular bug will most likely be an IE bug, and using your Web Dev bar is of no help.
What mostly surprises me is that these <explicitve> guys are selling YOUR product. Chris dude, don’t let this one just slide by.
Afterall, if your web dev bar costed some $dollars$ I still would have bought it, and you could have made some seriouis cash. But of course it goes against the simple and purist idea of open source. Good for you that you’ve made it free! And crap on them for ripping you off AND trying to make money.
*Note: I’m not buying it for ethical reasons. But if you, Chris, know of a way to release your web dev bar for IE, that’d be tight, and I’d pay twice the amount ‘those’ guys are charging
This is absolutely despicable. I can’t believe they would even try to pass off such a thing. I’m with the others and will be contacting them to give ‘em whatfor. Chris, your toolbar rocks. Totally rocks. I use it every day. It’s really nasty that these guys feel like they can just take you for a ride like this.
Alt-tab….
When I went to comment, I got Tsee’s info already filled for me in the name and URI fields. Weird! It’s like I got his/her cookie or something. Here’s a screenshot:
“When I went to comment, I got Tsee’s info already filled for me in the name and URI fields. Weird! It’s like I got his/her cookie or something.”
And I got yours…
My form was prefilled with
Name: MBoffin
URI: http://mboffin.com
really weird
Chris,
I think this kind of theft will become more prevalent once the scumbags realise that they can just grab some source code and avoid any development costs. It’s the ultimate business model for pond life marketers. Miranda was ripped off by an outfit called vbuzzer.com last year:
http://blog.miranda-im.org/2005/06/18/vbuzzer/
Maybe a letter from a legal eagle would be a smart investment on your behalf as the pond life may settle and you can have a beer or three on the results :-)
here’s your whois report:
domain: AEVITA.COM
person: Nikolas Ehrenberg
nic-hdl: NE116-GANDI
address: Vogelpothsweg 98
address: 44227
address: Dortmund
address: Germany
phone: +49.2313984838
e-mail: a.ehrenberg@web.de
lastupdated: 2004-08-05 11:43:41
go get’em!
I have worked with some unscrupulous local businesses in my time, but this one really takes the biscuit. This company is located literally five minutes from where I live. I’ve even had dealings with companies from the same business park. Small world.
Perhaps a neighbourly visit from myself and some of the local rugby team would encourage them to reconsider their development practices.
This is a disgrace though I do agree an IE Web Developer would be highly effective. I’ve tried the Web Accessibilty Toolbar and it’s not quite as good.
Time to get the lawyers out Chris.
A house call would be interesting James ;)
ASP Ombudsman is here:
Chris,
I’ve reported this pathetic rip-off at pirated-sites.com:
http://forums.pirated-sites.com/viewtopic.php?p=753#753
You should expect some good advice for some of the guys there.
Do not forget to make a big list of anyone related to the ripper, and make it obvious to him that you can contact all these people any time. Oh, and find someone you trust who can translate all email in German.
They claim to be a member of:
Perhaps a few words to this mob might also help Chris?
Failing that I like the rugby team idea but I also think you should send around the opening batsmen from the local cricket club would be helpful, full kit of cricket bats in tow of course.
Perhaps a friendly game out the front street, see who can get ‘six and out’ by smashing a few balls into the AEVITA windows?
Chris,
Just read the story on Asa’s site. What a incredible disgrace. At our company almost every developer uses your toolbar and we all love it.
If you ever need to remove the icons from the toolbar to get you in the clear I can make you some brand spanking new ones if you like. Take a look at these for instance.
Cease and Desist! Get that letter sent right away!
Chris, you have a great product. It is one of my frequently used extensions. I’ve been an evangelist for your Firefox version, and I sure will do the same if you release a toolbar for IE.
Thanks for the support everyone and all the helpful (and amusing - Anonymous and the rugby team!) suggestions.
On a side note, I believe the issue with the comment form populating with the previous person’s information was related to the WP-Cache plugin and some misconfiguration on my part. I have disabled the plugin for now which should fix the problem.
I can’t believe that a “company” would have the cojones to even try something like this. Do they not realize that the Web Developer extension is one of the most popular? That a very significant percentage of the Web developing community constantly uses it? Are there really any legal steps that can be taken?
This might be obvious, but nobody has mentioned it yet…
AFAIK, it’s perfectly acceptable for them to “rip off” your code and sell it under their label, as long as they provide the source code and license the new product under the GPL.
The fact that they’re trying to pass it off as their own work does suck (and violates your license), but there’s nothing inherently wrong with selling GPL’ed software written by others — if the source code is included. Look at Red Hat.
So, if they were to bundle the source code & release it under the GPL, would you still be upset?
“So, if they were to bundle the source code & release it under the GPL, would you still be upset?”
Kevin - definitely not. As people in the thread have suggested an equivalent tool for IE would be very helpful and I would be interested to see what the source looked like, to be honest.
This is not about being bitter that there is another tool or that they are charging for it, but rather being upset about the way they have gone about producing the tool.
I released my extension under the GPL because it felt like the “right” thing to do and I feel like they have stomped all over that sentiment.
Chris, Looking over the License Agreement for the AEVITA Web Inspector, it states:
“You may not use, copy, emulate, clone, rent, lease, sell, modify, decompile, disassemble, otherwise reverse engineer, or transfer the licensed program, or any subset of the licensed program, except as provided for in this agreement. Any such unauthorized use shall result in immediate and automatic termination of this license and may result in criminal and/or civil prosecution.”
Next thing they will be coming after YOU for emulating or cloning their toolbar!
Hmm… it looks like Web Inspector is now missing from Aevita’s website.
So it has - the direct link to it now goes to the product index too.
I hope someone did an archive/screen dump of that page before…
I feel guilty in not doing so.
James - I made sure I took a screenshot last night and it can be seen in my Flickr photos:
Davenport - You can still buy it, though.
Sorry I’m removing links to AEVITA in the comments as I can’t seem to get them to have the rel="nofollow" attribute, but Kevin is right - Web Inspector is still an option on the purchase page.
Maybe someone tipped off CyberGuard that their registered copyright was being used.
Er, I totally meant “trademark”.
The last few versions of WP should be adding rel=”nofollow” automatically to links in comments. At least it does in mine and I’m running v1.5.1.3. Okay, you can now delete this. :)
Yeah, I actually turn that off with a plugin as I find the links in the comments useful and remove any spam, but I just don’t know how to turn it on for individual links.
So it is.
Hmm….. tomorrow evening sound about right for it to vanish from there too then? Heh
Ah well there is still the good ol’ google cache…
Although googling for aevita web inspector shows a few sites with downloads etc (junction-point, download.com, zd-net and so on) and the have remove the file from their web servers. The http link at most of those sites to the authors own download now links to the index page.
Just to let you know I’ve been on board since it first appeared. I posted the matter on my blog as a way of support.
Just from a general standpoint, this whole aevita group is shady. They have one cheesy script called the “No-Right-Click” (like it’s a plugin).
The “No-Right-Click” is the only extension that is Free - which enables them to be part of the “Association of Shareware Professionals”
Heh. Everything else on their site costs money.
I was checking our website stats and saw 75 referrals yesterday from the entry on your blog “Web Developer Rip-Off”,
which I was slightly alarmed about, since I initially thought it was referring to the WAT.
but on reading it realised not. Thanks for your continued support of the WAT. We normally get about 10 referrals a day from your site.
I in turn promote and link to your web developer extension wherever i can.
I realise that people liken the WAT to a IE version of your extension,and there is some crossover, but this was never the motivation for its development; the purpose of the WAT is specific (checking for web site accessibility) and the range of functions reflects this (See: The Web Accessibility Toolbar and WCAG 1.0 ), although I have included more generic functions as well where they are useful to me in my work (reviewing the accessibility of web sites).
with regards
stevef
Hehe - sorry to freak you out like that, Steve. I am a big supporter of the Web Accessibility Toolbar and while it is not a direct equivalent to Web Developer it is the closest that I have seen for Internet Explorer.
If nothing else I hope this encourages some more people to try out your toolbar.
I try to connect AEVITA
the response is
“Bandwidth Limit Exceeded
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.
Apache/1.3.33 Server at http://www.aevita.com Port 80”
))
That’s a blatant rip-off of Web Developer extension! Aevita’s website now is showing ‘Bandwidth Limit Exceeded’ error, probably because everyone wants to see how they rip-off your product :-)
Haha! We did it 
Nobody messes with the creator of the most widely used Firefox extension, beotch.
Hey Chris,
I really love the firefox web dev. toolbar. I actually work with a guy who is making a tool based on your ideas that works with IE and Firefox. Obviously he won’t be charging for it :)
http://www.salted.com/unsalted/cssvista-a-sneak-preview
It will be completely GPL’d once released and credit given to you. I haven’t actually got a beta copy (its for Windows and I’m on Mac) but I’ve been told it looks pretty good.
Can’t believe someone would re-release open source code with a license fee. It’s disgraceful. Good work on taking him down, word seems to have spread around the net pretty quickly. Hurrah for blogs
Aevita website is up again, but the Web Inspector plugin is no longer avaiable on the “purchase” page…
The screenshots of the app at /img/wi*.(gif|png) are still present though.
Note I didn’t put the actual URLs there to comply with Chris’s wishes to avoid them picking up referral headers from here.
David - that looks like a very interesting tool. I can’t wait to try it out when it is released.
Hey Chris,
I work with David and just wanted to let you know I’ve posted about why I think they really have just taken your code.
I’ll make sure to send you a copy of CSSVista before we launch, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
It’s great to see the impact we’ve all had on this “company” - hopefully making others think twice before doing the same.
Google websearch with all the site containing the AEVITA Web Inspector in the title.
They still have the newsletter
Microsoft just released their Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar.
You know what I find funny is if this guy wanted to rework your toolbar to make it work in IE and then give it out for free then I have a feeling you would have consented to that as long as credit was given to the original. Just a hunch..
This reminds me of Mike Davidsons recent blog on logo originality. Seems people will steal most anything and claim it as their own.
For me, AEVITA Web Inspector and Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar are only copies of Web Developer.
Chris,
What can I say?
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!
You’ve made and distributed an extremely useful and imaginative FireFox extension. I use it nearly every day.
I suppose that Rip-offs are bound to happen.
Wish it wasn’t so and I know that some of my scripts, code, widgets and such suffer from a similar fate, tho they’re not not nearly as popular or as blatantly ripped off.
Still, I can say that, in general, my positive experiences with complete strangers on the Internet, have far outweighed my negative experiences.
I hope the same is true for you.
What goes around comes around. Keep up your good work and good things are bound to keep happening!
Cheers,
-stk
Well … LOL … I didn’t realize how out of date I am. :p
I see all this happened and was resolved a year ago.
You can not publish my late comment if you want, but the sentiments still hold.
Cheers,
-stk
rdude
3 years ago
August 23, 2005
Chris,
You really need to give credit where credit is due. Look at that screenshot. Obviously a lot of work went into shuffling around the Miscellaneous, Outline, Resize, and Tools menus so that they are in a slightly different order than in the Web Developer extension! And these folks even had the initiative to come up with a new icon for the About button!