Michael Arrington of Techcrunch wrote a review about a new word processor called Zoho Writer, and got replies from both the creators of Writeboard and Writely that it’s basically a ripoff of their software. (see comments after the review).
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I think there is a mis-understanding here. You guys are confusing between Zoho Writer & Zoho Planner which are 2 different services.
In Techcrunch, Mike wrote a review about Zoho Writer ( online word processor ) in which he mentioned “Check out Zoho’s BackPack-like product Zoho Planner too”. There was no review written by Mike on Zoho Planner.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/10/02/zoho-writers-ajax-word-processor/
For this, Jason immediately attacked Mike with “it hurts your credibility to support these sorts of businesses and ventures.”
In the review, Mike also compared Zoho Writer with Writely “In fact, it’s pretty much exactly like Writely, except they do not yet support Word format import/export or tagging (coming soon).”. FYKI, Zoho Writer is released just within 2 weeks of release of Writely.
Sam of Writely was not comfortable with this statement as he cannot agree a statement which equals competition with them ( IMHO, its users feedback which matters a lot than what the creator claims ). But Sam immediately responded with a comment requesting Mike to be more accurate “I think Michael can review whatever he wants. I just objected to the statement “Zoho…is as good as the rest.”… & “I’d like TechCrunch to be a little more accurate if it’s going to actually review products, instead of just notify folks about them.”
It’s mention about Zoho Planner in the review which Jason talk about & not Zoho Writer. Zoho Writer have no similarities with Writeboard. Zoho Writer is positioned as fully functional online word processor.
Zoho Planner is competing against Backpackit offering similar feature set ( interface copy as said by Jason is a LIE & anyone can verify it themself ) and that’s the reason why Jason wants to bad mouth about it everywhere. This shows Jason is not used to competition before.
Here is a URL to one of Backpackit Forums post. This justifies the existence of Zoho Planner ( We want to offer online organizer for the masses by making it very affordable ).
http://www.backpackit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=240&p=1
Mike ( Techcrunch ): Please correct me if I have mentioned anything wrong here.
Thanks,
Ranjith.
I agree with you. I hate to be doing this myself. We prefer to simply write code and compete harder. Our philosophy is not to beat our own drum all the time, but let the customers experience the product. But when we are attacked unfairly and in such terms as Jason has done (it is beyond mere criticism), we had to respond. Please notice that we don’t go around posting anywhere, other than to respond.
We simply aimed for compatibility in ZohoPlanner with the market leading competitor, an entirely legitimate and ethical business practice. With the basic stuff covered, now we are rapidly adding new features.
His agenda seems to be to try to delegitimize a legitimate competitor by throwing mud. He will fail.
Sridhar
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]]>May be you are too young to know this, there was a lawsuit by Apple against MS Windows, claiming that they copied the Apple Mac UI. The court threw it out entirely.
Internet Explorer v3 had the same buttons and the same UI as Netscape Navigator 3, which itself was preceded by Mosaic.
Plagiarism has a precise meaning. Did we copy ANY of your code anywhere? The UI looks similar, but everything was written from scratch.
I challenge you to sue us if you feel you have a case. And yes, I will sue you if you do not stop your reckless defamation. Go look up “commercial defamation”. The laws are stronger here when commercial considerations are involved, and you are a competitor defaming us. It is not simply free speech.
As a technical and business person, I generally do not like to involve legalities, but you are taking your reckless commentary too far.
Your problem is that you have an underfeatured, underpowered application, for which you are overcharging. It worked for sometime, and it will soon stop working. So you are whining in every possible forum. Welcome to the real world.
Sridhar
]]>Because you’re a developer, you would know more about this than I would: what exactly can you protect in an interface? I wonder if you guys at 37Signals might have a tougher time of it than most, since you ascribe to the “less is better” principle, which for new products sounds reasonable but leaves you with a smaller number of relatively easy-to-copy features.
Practically speaking, if Zoho isn’t breaking any laws, they become competition, do they not? Just like every other online music service is competition for iTunes, I guess.
Doesn’t make it right, of course.
]]>In the book world, if you take someone’s writing and call it your own that’s plagerism. In the software world if you take someone’s concept AND interface that’s the same type of plagerism.
Concepts and ideas alone are not unique. What’s unique is the execution of the idea. When you take someone’s execution you are plagerizing.
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