One thing that I do not hear discussed is the reasons why you even need a website. In my consulting work, I will frequently ask if the client is sure that they need a website.
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ActiveCollab
written by Dave Merwin
Monday, October 2, 2006
One of my coworkers pointed this out to me. Active Collab.
Active Collab is a project management tool that is not shy about saying that it is a free Basecamp from 37Signals. ActiveCollab is Free. It is on your server. I can see how both of those options seem really attractive to small business (churches) or service providers.
I will be testing it on my servers over the next few days, so I will let you know what I think.
However, this brings up a very interesting question.
Active Collab LOOKS just like Basecamp. Even Open Office tries to differentiate itself from Microsoft Office. But Active Collab looks just like Basecamp.
My question is, isn’t this a trademark violation? When companies start using ActiveCollab for there own clients and charge money for it, is there going to be the likelihood of confusion? This is going to be interesting for that reason alone.
What do you think?
Actually Active Collab looks really cool. But a couple of things to note, no there would be no trademark violation. Trademark is only about well, marks, not look and feel.
I went over and looked at the Apple vs MS case on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_v._Microsoft). If 37signal applied for a patent on the look and feel, then there could be an issue, but then 37signels would have to show that what they did was unique (in terms of look and feel). (IANAL etc etc)
Copyright could come into play, but that looks pretty hard to do for an interface.
About activeCollab, it looks like they are fixing many issue that I have with Basecamp. It should be fun to look at.
“A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.” — Didacus Stella
Michael Calabrese October 3rd, 2006 at 11:10 am