Christian (Apollo Dev) on contributing to Voyager

by the screenshots it looks like I've done plenty
Voyager is a copy of the Apollo UI. He's entirely right when he says he's already contributed significantly.
I don't blame him for being grumpy, but I also think it's legit to clone a decent UI. As Voyager matures the UIs will diverge.
- Ya like I empathize with him but I know if I refuse to allow peopleto continue using somethingthry love, they find a way around it. That is the techie ethos, at least it is to me. Seize the means of production hehe
- He is becoming a bit stuck on the whole Reddit situation. He keeps sharing nostalgic posts about Apollo. It sucks what happened, but it’s time for him to find a new gig… I know he likes pixel pals, but that isn’t for me. I did pay for his mobile html inspector, but it’s buggy and not well supported.

On the one hand, nice jab. Unfair since he wasn’t interested, but get his jollies where he can, I guess.
On the other, he knew longer than most that Reddit was done. He can pivot to Lemmy at any time.
- Based on this https://reddthat.com/post/8711097 I don’t think he has any interest in Lemmy
  
  Thanks for the link. I didn’t think he’s in the least interested in Lemmy. Unsure why he’s upset that someone else took the ball that he wasn’t interested in and ran with it.

Honestly does response really mean he’s mad or anything about it? Voyager is obviously inspired by Apollo, but any developer who does UX on iOS should inspired by good iOS UX. I think people may be reading into it to much. He already indicated that he was not going to port Apollo. If anything I’d be irritated that people keep asking him more than anything.
- See here
  Also this comment.

- Well he is not here...
  
  Mastodon?

lol

Wow, pretty clear how he feels about it. But also he made plenty of money of Apollo and then just shut it down and refused to open source it. So I don’t feel particularly inclined to change my behavior here.
Edit: All these people white knighting a dev that made millions off his app.
- Why would he have any obligation to open source a project he was shutting down? If he made the code open, that would be a kind and generous gesture. Not an expected and assumed action.
- I didn’t say he was obligated to open source it. He gains nothing by keeping it closed. If he had open sourced it I could still use it because I have a Reddit API key. If he open sourced it, it could be converted to work with Lemmy. But he effectively burned it down.
  He doesn’t owe it to me to open source it but I can still think it was a shitty selfish decision.
  
  He is not obligated in anything but it shouldn't suprise him or be sour about other devs stepping in to do what he doesn't want to do. It doesn't help that he acts like this is done out of malice even though it's not.
  
  Narwhal found a way, gonna need some 'splainin' as to how he was singled out
- I mean, he provided a great app for free for years. Why should he open source it, just because he also earned cash with it? As far as I know he was also in talks with premium members so that they could get their money back but I’m not updated on that. And of course he shut it down, the app essentially became useless.
  
  I never received it. Gonna call Apple soon. Damn shame for all involved :(
- Well now we have multiple great FOSS options instead of one or two dominant paid apps. I was a happy Apollo user, but the current state of things feels more in line with the ideals behind Lemmy. So maybe his actions led to a more positive outcome than if he had kept on going like people wanted.

Here are my takeaway. Christian does sound slightly miffed at the fact that Voyager has copied much of the look and feel of Apollo. Even though he has not contributed any code directly to the Voyager app, he has indeed "contributed" to it indirectly. I highly doubt Christian will go after Voyager app in a legal manner. He definitely would have a legal standing to do so but that would alienate his support from the past Apollo community that has moved onto Voyager. There is just no reason for him to do so. I suppose I can imagine a crazy scenario where Apollo IP switches hands to another company and that company decides to take legal action against Voyager but that seems highly unlikely. In retrospect it would have been nice if developer of Voyager basically got permission or just simply asked Christian if it's okay to use the look and feel of Apollo in writing. That would have avoided any awkwardness or ambiguity.
- Copyright has not been violated, and so he has no standing for legal action.
- There's approximately 0% chance of that happening. Christian made up his mind, he's free to do whatever he wants. And we're free to do whatever we want short of actionable real lawsuits. Time will tell but the genie's outtathe bottle.

Wait, is that an Apollo’s screenshot? How?
- You can modify the app to use your own API key
  
  Can you please help me out with that? Where do I start?
- Isn't he on Mastodon? Maybe the app UI is similar, in which case, irony...

@christianselig@mastodon.social Can you share some clarification on your thoughts on the Voyager app?
- @ChristianSelig Sorry, not sure if the original mention went through on Lemmy or not

Hm, does Voyager have his blessing for being so similar to Apollo I wonder?
- Does it need it? AFAIK, you can’t copyright a design.
  
  You can’t copyright the underlying idea. You can copyright the specific expression of that idea.
  
  Pretty sure that's exactly what copyright is for, actually
- I believe he does not like it
  
  I don’t believe there is fuck-all he can do about it, unless it’s somehow directly lifting code.
- Seems like it does not, but it also seems like Christian isn't really taking action against it.
  
  He's a smart guy and he wants to move on. He should do that and people should leave him alone but when he puts himself on the record, its fair game.

Mods removing a lot of comments. No reason given.
- Interestingly I can see them all on my instance with Voyager. Is this a new feature? They show as removed in red but still visible.

Narwhal