Nobody learns if nothing is brok3n

I'm not neutral in this. Erik is on my buddy list. Erik told me exactly on what happened and what caused him to not use Adam's work, and it seems - from Erik's description, true, absolutely not neutral, but he didn't have anything to gain by exaggerating the situation - like Adam had made promises he couldn't keep and had taken tons of time to in the end turn down his request. Erik wrote a big, similar, weblog entry describing his experiences with Adam, but he ended up not publishing it. (http://nslog.com/2007/03/06/todays_post)

So - what do you do? You're a software developer. You want one icon. You know exactly how you want it to look. You've given the prospect to one artist that you don't want to use anymore. Even if Erik had ended up doing the icon *himself*, Adam would have had ground to call it out as a 'ripoff', since it looked like the icon *he* made. But on the other hand, Adam made that icon based on a description by Erik - the same description Erik gave to his new artist.

Adam and Erik are both in a hard place on this. I haven't talked to Adam at all, ever, and I've only had one side of the story until I read Adam's post. I'm not in a position to make an objective judgement. In the end, I'm tremendously uncomfortable with seeing people yelling at eachother, and as such I do hope Adam and Erik will work it out somehow, but I also know it's not a case of Erik ripping Adam off. Adam was given specific instructions to produce something looking like that - if Adam had had the idea on his own, that would have been something else entirely! The pixel-by-pixel match is curious, though, but I'm not entirely sure that's not the result of wanting it an exact size to look good in the Dock, an idea Adam himself has championed.

I don't know how someone could even entertain the notion that Erik sent Fernando anything other than Adam's icon. Take a look at this animated comparison:

http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/3199/hatkb6.gif

Notice how the shape of the hat is exactly the same. And take a look at the knot in the ribbon. It's location, shape, and dimensions are identical to Adam's icon. How can anyone seriously believe that Fernando produced this icon without having Adam's version on hand? This is very clearly a rip-off.

It doesn't matter how detailed a description Erik gave Fernando. Even if he specified what dimensions he wanted every part of that icon to be, no designer would be able to make an icon with that much similarity to Adam's without access to his icon. You would have to do some serious reaching to suggest that such a similarity could have happened by chance.

Now, I'm not saying that Adam is completely in the right here. He couldn't finish the icons and broke the contract, so it's understandable that Erik didn't pay him for any part the project. But if Erik sent Fernando this icon to duplicate, then he is totally in the wrong. He's using an icon very heavily based off of one he didn't pay for.

Before Erik gave up entirely on the discussion, but after my comment, we talked about this and he sent me a 512-pixel version of the icon, and I'm told he also sent it to other people involved in the discussion. I don't deem it a pixel-by-pixel ripoff of Adam's version at all. I deem it very similar, of course, but I don't see that Erik should necessarily back off from the same general idea or even the same manner of execution just because Adam fell out on him.

The point is, I could email 20 icon designers and commission them to make an icon for me with the instructions "black fedora, press hat style, with an RSS icon in it" and would get icons that would all look very different. Yes, they would all be a black hat with an orange RSS icon in them, but I guarantee you none of them would have the hat situated on exactly the same plane, or a hat with exactly the same shape, or a ribbon with the knot located in exactly the same position with the exactly the same dimensions. It becomes very clear how improbable it is for such a thing to happen by chance when you realize just how many variables there are.

I consider myself fairly neutral in this. I'm not friends with Adam or Erik. I do subscribe to their RSS feeds and enjoy both of their blogs. I don't have any information about this debacle other than what's been posted online. When both of them post conflicting information about who said what over here: http://samuraicoder.net/node/304, I have no reason to believe either of them. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that everything Erik said he told Adam is true. In particular: "we told him what colors we wanted, where we wanted the “feedicon” located, and even what direction we wanted the hat to point". He also says later: "we sent Adam the Google search for press hats and were absolutely clear that the feedicon should go where the “Press” ticket was" and "most of the hats displayed in the Google images search for “press hat” point left". If these were the same instructions given to Fernando, it would still not be enough information to generate that icon in the way that it was. The instructions are simply not specific enough. I highly doubt Erik specified the {x,y,z} plane for the hat to rest on, and even if he did, there would still be all the variables I listed above to account for.

"but I don't see that Erik should necessarily back off from the same general idea or even the same manner of execution just because Adam fell out on him"

We aren't talking about the same idea or execution. I think everyone can agree that Erik should definitely be able to request that another designer create the same icon, and give this new designer the same directions given to the old designer. Perhaps even pass along some new knowledge gained in the design process. But to send the new designer the unpaid for icon and request a duplicate is not right.

And finally, on Adam's blog when he mentioned this in March (http://www.artofadambetts.com/weblog/?p=181), Fernando wrote a comment saying:
"I certainly did not succeed re-designing this icon"
And this is exactly the problem. It looks like Fernando was given instructions to redesign Adam's icon, rather than create a brand new icon with the same style. Erik addressed this in a comment on the Samurai Coder blog saying "I doubt he 'admitted' anything of the sort" which is not really addressing the statement but rather more of an vague dismissal.

"But to send the new designer the unpaid for icon and request a duplicate is not right." Does anyone know that this is exactly what happened? Only Erik knows if he sent the request to Fernando before or after receiving Adam's icon. (I'm not claiming either way, I don't know either. But it's interesting how that would change everything.)

We're reading tea leaves. The only people who know for sure are Erik and Adam. We're not going to get the full timeline and all the facts until one of them comes out and tells us exactly everything we know, and if Adam's doing that, we still don't know where Fernando entered the picture.

I'm not agreeing with your assertion that it's a rip-off, and we're not even agreeing what a rip-off would constitute. And none of us know all the facts. Therefore I declare this discussion pointless; I'll be willing to debate this further only if new facts arise. But it's also a terribly destructive discussion to have - assuming that one party in it is lying and that one party is 'correct'. The reality is probably not that clear-cut.

Hail!

What do you think about Apple Iogo? >:)