Obtvse removes the two worst features of Svbtle: exclusivity and condescension.

bigiain · on March 23, 2012

Harsh, but with a core of truth.

In my opinion, if Dustin is showing off his thing with a key "feature" being "invitation only", then it seems open season for someone else to think "Fair enough, if you think curated bloggers is a key differentiating feature, then me launching a similar service _without_ that key feature seems OK".

In one sense - people seem to love having their ideas "validated" by new startups claiming "We're $existingThing for $newMarket". "We're HipMonk for dogs!" We're GoogleAnalytics for yoga retreats!" "We're Svbtle for non-celebrity-bloggers!"

What Dustin made is very nice. He may very well be able to curate bloggers in a way that makes it wildly successful - I hope he does, I'll cheer him on. Maybe though, Obtvse will gain a bigger or different userbase. Maybe someone wil be able to take the Obtvse codebase and do a better curating job than Dustin - with the right code ready to roll, I'd bet on Maria Popova or Cory Doctorow or Rob Malda or even Nick Denton to win at the blogger-curating role over Dustin…

obilgic · on March 23, 2012

Kudos!

megablast · on March 23, 2012

So it is ok to clone something but with a completely new feature, that being a different platform?

Not that I see this as a clone at all, just disagree with this as a general rule.

philwelch · on March 23, 2012

It also apparently removes the distracting animations.

54mf · on March 23, 2012

That still doesn't make it right to rip off someone else's work!

trebor · on March 23, 2012

It would be wrong if NateW hacked into and stole the source, or stole the design source/code of Dustin's project. But reproduction of someone else's work isn't ripping them off but is a compliment (it means that it's worth reproducing).

As good as Dustin is, neither his ideas or implementation of his blog/cms platform are that unique.

why-el · on March 23, 2012

Follow that line and you will end up with two to three websites in the whole world of internet. He did not rip it off, in fact I see it as a favor for the original author, since its clearly stated that the second work is based on the first. If I release an HN simply for handful of people who I think are worthy of using it, then I should be dead ready for a crazy torrent of HN alternatives.