If there’s one thing you can admire in software developers who rip off other people’s ideas, it’s honesty about what they’re doing.
In building WrongRoom, Joseph Lyman has created something modeled on the longstanding best-in-class full screen editor, WriteRoom. It’s his first OS X app, so we should be gentle: but at least he’s up front about why he made something that’s been made before:
“WrongRoom: A shoddy freeware clone of a perfectly good program”
He even encourages anyone who downloads WrongRoom to go and buy a license for WriteRoom. And he’s right. WriteRoom is a much better app with many more features. WrongRoom offers vaguely similar functionality, but it’s just … well, wrong. Even the icon’s a little wonky.
Top marks to Joseph for being so upfront about it, though.
Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He also writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. You can find out more at his website, and follow him on Twitter @gilest.
2 responses to “WrongRoom: Honestly Ripping Off Better Software”
Hey, Joseph Lyman here… honestly, I’m shocked that anyone even found my little program :) As I state on my site, I only wrote it because I can’t stand “timed trialsâ€ÂÂ, and I wanted a free version of the program I liked… voila WrongRoom.
And you’re right, the icon is a little wonky… I made it in a jiffy in GIMP, which has a not-so-great algorithm for shrinking a circle… anyway, no excuse there, I was just in a hurry. Since you complained, I’ll fix in in the next version :)
Speaking of next versions, 1.5b is out today because someone emailed me and asked if they could have an option for bigger or smaller fonts… enjoy!