The thing that amazes me most about this whole debacle is how completely unnecessary it was. Web designers are popping up everywhere like fucking mushrooms, and these guys (presumably pretty intelligent) chose to just steal a design.
Developing a nice-looking design is the easiest part of a startup. Generating the idea, interest, and funding is what stalls 98% of them. They had all that, but screwed up on the most doable aspect of the company. That alone greatly calls into question the judgment of the founders (not to mention the moral implications).
For me, the really objectionable part isn't the "thievery", it's the sloppiness of it.
Anyone with half a clue knows that if you're copying HTML:(a) you'd better redact any references to the original source, (b) you ought to change the class names, and (c) you sure as shit better not link to resources on the owner's servers. After all, most HTML/CSS is borderline protectable under copyright in the first place.
P.S. If you're copy/pasting HTML/CSS, you're pretty terrible at web design. Anyone with even the slightest facility in web design could whip up a clone of the 37Signals landing page in an evening without doing more than sneaking a peek at the source.
Developing a nice-looking design is the easiest part of a startup.
Yes and no. They didn't choose the design because it looked nice, they chose it because it had already been A/B tested as more effective (admittedly, for a product other than their own, but still).
As someone who has created nice designs, and as someone that has also extensively multivariant tested designs to see which one gets a 1% boost in clickthrough... the 'nice' part is just the tip of the iceberg.
To clarify: not defending what they did. Just suggesting what I think their reasoning was.
It really reminded me of the homeschooling family in some small town who named their kid "Hitler" and then tried to sue the local bakery who refused to put his name on a cake. They really seemed to think the whole US would get behind them as a "free speech" movement.
If you're gonna name your kid something horrible, that's one thing. But if you actually think people are going to support you for it? A whole nother kettle of fish entirely.
The scariest people are people who not only do wrong, but who don't have the good sense to realize how others will react to it. They either entirely lack "theory of mind," or it's so out of touch with reality as to be utterly useless.
Whenever you come across people like that in life/business, I've found that it's smart to run as fast as possible the other way.
Developing a nice-looking design is the easiest part of a startup. Generating the idea, interest, and funding is what stalls 98% of them. They had all that, but screwed up on the most doable aspect of the company. That alone greatly calls into question the judgment of the founders (not to mention the moral implications).