This to me sounds pretty literal.

Ethics aside, it’s not as easy a task as is claimed. If it were it’d be done by now.

I think many commenters are taking the posts to literally. No great programmer/designer would be happy with a verbatim copy of another person/group’s work. They would most certainly put their own flavor on it. 37s was only an example.

37s isn’t the only company lucky enough not to have an imitator and it puzzles me that some companies don’t have imitators with different business models. An example is FeedBurner. A-Listers called (ok begged) for someone to step up and create an alternative that could be hosted in-house. People offered to pay for the software when it was done and pay to help get it developed. The silence was deafening and it was obvious people were thinking about “right now” instead of tomorrow.

For these companies that don’t have an open source (heck, some have no competition) alternative, what happens if these companies decide to go out of business? How many blogs would lose all their readers if FeedBurner shut down? How many companies would be scrambling if 37s shut down? What if any of these companies were bought out by people that wanted to take the company in a different direction? What if the service level drops? I could go on an on.

With blogging software any of them could shut down and the blogger might be inconvenienced but it would be relatively simple to continue blogging. Companies, especially governmental agencies, are looking to use open source alternatives. In just about every other space people feel more comfortable with alternatives, especially free ones. Why not with web applications? Why couldn’t an open source alternative be great and have great marketing?

Just because it’s open source doesn’t mean it can’t be monetized, does it?

That you could reproduce their product, but could never hope to reproduce their brand equity, following & marketing machine. Those guys are better than most at making GOOD software, but they’re also better than most at GREAT marketing. Which puts them ahead of 99.99% of the teams you could assemble.

What he’s really asking is what is to stop anyone from being an imitator? There is such a low barrier for entry that, besides mindshare, there isn’t anything to truly stop potential imitator’s.

As far as the whole:

“a truly talented team won’t settle for just copying every idea and concept from another app, they’ll change something and make different decisions”

That’s not even a question in this situation. Of course they would put their own spin on it but the base would be the same.

Look at how many developers there are out that doing open source projects. I hope you aren’t trying to say they are all untalented hacks.

First of all, copying a meticulously designed high-quality web app regardless of which, is not child’s play and it doesn’t take a small amount of time.

Secondly, a truly talented team won’t settle for just copying every idea and concept from another app, they’ll change something and make different decisions. Every change, even the subtle ones that are barely consciously made, is a potential stray from the golden path that makes the original app great.

Thirdly, only the design can be copied, the server-side code takes talent and time to produce too.

No, I don’t think you will have success in copying another product like that, because your copycat team is very unlikely to be talented at all, at anything they do.

Jon, when I said that they were vulnerable, I meant even in comparison to most other web apps. Of course they are all vulnerable – but 37s’ products more so than others. Their products are so small and lightweight that it would be much easier to undercut 37s than, say, Google. I think that was the point of the original post – the more straightforward the model, the easier it is to replicate.

In reality, Basecamp wouldn’t be Basecamp if it wasn’t ever so easy to use and lacking in bloating features. But this simplicity is also it’s vulnerability. It’s a catch 22 situation.

have you ever heard the term “open-source”?