Microsoft China stole all the design and code from Plurk (microblogging number 1 in Asia) + UPD2: translation of the full version of events

" Imitation can be seen as a form of recognition, but the glaring case of theft of code, design, controls is never cool.
Especially when the intruder is the world's largest software company.

Yes, we are talking about Microsoft. "
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Plurk Developer Blog Entry

Under the cut - glaring screenshots.

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UPD1:

Fast translation of a detailed version of events (please write through habraposhta about noticed errors, thanks).

UPD2:

More readable, and a full version of the translation of the detailed version of events (thanks to all, everyone who helped to translate +1 into karma and my thanks):

Imitation can be considered as a form of recognition, but a glaring case of theft of code, design, and controls is never cool.
Especially when the intruder is the world's largest software company.

Yes, we are talking about Microsoft.

Here is a brief list of what happened:

1. In November of this year, the Chinese division of Microsoft launched its own microblogging service called MSN Juku / Hompy / Mclub.

2. The design and controls of the running service are a complete copy of Plurk. Including an innovative key control in the form of a timeline moving from left to right.

3. About 80% of the service code was stolen from Plurk (proof above)

4. Plurk was never closely associated with Microsoft.

5. Being a young startup, we are quite surprised and shocked by such actions.

Without knowing what to do, we need your support and suggestions.

Our Taiwanese users first told us that Microsoft had recently launched a microblogging service that strongly resembles Plurk in appearance. Needless to say, we were very shocked and outraged when we saw with our own eyes how much Microsoft’s service is similar to Plurk. Starting with the system of tabs, emoticons, accounting for karma and ending with action prefixes, support for media content and guides to new users. All these distinctive features of Plurk were found in the new Microsoft service.

Find ten differences (in the screenshots) or what is common between Microsoft MClub (above) and Plurk (below)!

A little inspiration never hurts, will you agree? Of course, we understand that there will always be someone who wants to copy the design and navigation elements.
popular and well-known services and use them in some of their local projects. Plurk has already been the most popular microblogging service in Taiwan, 10 times ahead of Twitter in the number of users. Being a kind of answer to it in the largest countries of East Asia.

Naturally, Microsoft, probably seeing a similar success, decided to unleash this potential in a similar service in the Chinese Internet space. In the end, if someone managed to do a good thing, then others will copy it or try to adapt to another market. This is natural for the Internet.

And most often these clones do not cause us concern. But in this case there were exceptional circumstances in which we consider ourselves insulted, both in legal and moral terms. The fact that Microsoft is doing this in broad daylight does not do credit to the company.

Allow me to clarify. If it were just an external resemblance, then perhaps we would accept this. We would not rush to criticize Microsoft, and could resolve this issue amicably.

However, in reality, everything is sewn with white threads. Upon closer inspection, we found that most of Microsoft’s MClub code and data structure one-to-one fits in with our code. Microsoft took the source codes, libraries, css code, and did not even bother to disguise it.

Here are just three small examples (in the screenshots) of the hundreds of similarities that we found. Any developer can see the copied and stolen code here.

Some bloggers have suggested that Microsoft Mclub / Juku was a kind of our partnership with Microsoft, which would allow us to re-enter the Chinese Internet market, closed today because of the Great Firewall of China. It should be noted that before the decision of the Chinese censorship to ban our service, we were in the first place among the Chinese microblogging.

Let us shed some light on this situation. Although many reputable Internet companies were partnering with Plurk, appreciating our innovations and market leadership in Asia, we absolutely had no contact with Microsoft. We have never in any way contacted Microsoft. And they did not give any prior written or oral permission to anyone on their side. Nevertheless, they took away our code, took our CSS, having copied completely the essence and spirit of our service.

We are still in shock and ask ourselves the question: "Why did Microsoft go down to deliberate plagiarism without bothering to make any agreements?" steal. The paradox lies in the fact that Microsoft is leading the fight for tougher intellectual property laws on the Internet, as well as opposing piracy in China.

What next? We are not quite sure, but we are exploring our possibilities. We seek the advice of our colleagues, answer questions from the press, collect the facts of the whole chain of events. In general, we are doing everything we can to understand why and how this event occurred.

We appeal to our millions of loyal users: we also need your help! We need your strong and loud voices. We want you to help us spread this important information to everyone.

Please translate this story, share it with local media, bloggers and friends, and help us fight for your favorite Plurk.

UPD3:

In the blog of Plurk added contacts for the press and a link to our habratopik :)
Perhaps the contacts will be interesting to those who want to find out the details for the press:

Dave Thompson (dave@plurk.com),
Plurk Asia Pacific Press Contact, +64 9 889 0610