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Cease And Desist order From HTC on Beautiful Widgets.

If you guys haven't seen the amazing widgets from LevelUpStudio, you should. Beautiful Widgets was inspired from the HTC Sense UI so that people like me and other Droid users could enjoy the really sexy flip clock dock.

HTC has sent a Cease and Desist Order on LevelUpStudio to remove the app, reported by AndroidGuys (tipped off by yours truely).

I'm working with him to actually test his new Twitter client. I'm gonna blog my thoughts on it soon enough, so if you want, check out supitsmike.blogspot.com until then (And I worked a god-awful long time to get that image of the Droid to look quasi-good).

Cheers

Comments

PPC_Dude

supitsmike wrote:
If you guys haven't seen the amazing widgets from LevelUpStudio, you should. Beautiful Widgets was inspired from the HTC Sense UI so that people like me and other Droid users could enjoy the really sexy flip clock dock.

HTC has sent a Cease and Desist Order on LevelUpStudio to remove the app, reported by AndroidGuys (tipped off by yours truely).

I'm working with him to actually test his new Twitter client. I'm gonna blog my thoughts on it soon enough, so if you want, check out supitsmike.blogspot.com until then (And I worked a god-awful long time to get that image of the Droid to look quasi-good).

Cheers

Booo! to HTC. I completely understand the copyright issues, but come on, this is a widget not an interface. Did HTC invent and/or copyright images of the clock, sun, clouds, rain, etc.

If the dev did indeed "copy" the graphics from HTC, then by all means, the guy should have to pay. I personally think that I would go after royalties rather than a cease and desist. I can't really believe that these widgets really cut into HTC's bottom line.

Just my opinion.

fezzik

Personally I think HTC would do better to make Sense UI available to other companies. I get how it is an advantage to have your own look and functionality and Android allows for that but it is also an open OS so there shouldn't be so many proprietary things going on.

bkfist

The OS is open, not thte apps that run under it (well, some are, but that is at the choosing of the software developer.) Just because something is free, as in free beer, does not mean it is Free as in Freedom.

I like to support (not just use) software that is Free as in Freedom, hence I use Linux at home and work. It is also the primary reason I have been following the Android OS for the past 2 years, and the reson I jumped on Android the first chance I was able. (No T-Mo coverage in my entire area code, so I had to wait until Sprint released the Hero on Oct 11th, and switched to Verizon due to a bad customer support experience.)

In this case, where the author just made his widgets look very similar to the HTC widgets, and from what I understand he did *not* actually copy the artwork directly from the HTC widgets, I think HTC is being overly protective.

For me, I think I'll stand back a couple weeks and see wher HTC goes with this and with some of the other software being distributed that they certainly WOULD have a definite legal case again. (Modders putting Sense UI onto non-HTC phones)

I've still got a few weeks left to make a decision if I want to ask my daughter to see if she would mind returning her HTC Eris for a Motorola Droid. If HTC starts going all ASCAP(y) I'll pay the extra $100 to get her a Droid, and let my money do the voting on the issue.

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