Jake Behrens

Ok people, I know we’re a little over-excited to figure out new things sometimes. Sometimes it’s just re-implementing a cool new feature someone else did. But the line needs to be drawn at stealing outright, not to mention encouraging others to do the same.

I read this article today about how to implement Loren Brichter’s Pull-to-Reload feature in Tweetie 2 and was enjoying the article until this WTF quote:

“The final touch is to steal the appropriate wav files from the Tweetie 2 IPA and play them at the correct places in the flow. For sound effects I like to use the SoundEffect wrapper class that can be found in the Apple samples. In case you don’t yet know, you can simply rename a .IPA file to .ZIP and decompress the bundle. Right-Click “Reveal Package Contents” and look for the wav files. Turns out Tweetie 2 only use 3 and all of them belong to the refresh table view, so I grabbed them all.”

Are you kidding me? Just like that, steal the sounds. Why not take the graphics? Hell…why not just steal the app. Is this where we’re going devs?

I just think it’s plain wrong. Make your own sounds modeled off the existing ones if you have to, license your own, but seriously, don’t steal them! We’re all developers trying to make something cool and trying to make a living at it. This is why we do it. We are passionate. How the hell can we lift each other up if all we do is break each other down?

He says in the article that he bought both versions and that he knows Loren makes quality…excuse me, that $2.99 didn’t give you a license to sounds or graphics in the app.

Maybe I’m too upset about it, but I really don’t think Loren would be like, “Cool!” about it. And I know for a fact that other people like Tapbots have gone to great lengths to point out devs that are blatantly ripping off their graphics and sounds from their apps.

In conclusion, if you want to make something cool, make it yourself. Stealing from other apps is just plain weak.