this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Since we're on lemmy, I'll use this as an example. If someone were making a GNOME (GTK4 + libadwaita) Lemmy frontend, and I were to start working on my own Lemmy frontend for GNOME, thereby competing with this already existing project for users, is that wrong? To make things more interesting, what if I wanted write my Lemmy client in Rust since I didn't like the original being written in Python? To make things even more interesting, what if that project is slow in development due to the developer not having a lot of time? My gut instinct is that it is immoral. I feel like I would be taking away a project that the author had sunk some amount of time in, hoping to impact others in a positive way. I understand there is no guarantee that my project does better than theirs, but I should still be conscientious of the possibility, right? Let me know your thoughts FOSS community.

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[–] GuyDudeman@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Steve Jobs attributed the quote “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” to Pablo Picasso.

However, the original adage seems to originate from 1892

“Great poets imitate and improve, whereas small ones steal and spoil.

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

Looks like Jobs himself was stealing here ;)

Only he changed the original to make himself look better.