This afternoon, we wrote a post about the popular RSS feed reader, Reeder, calling out rival MobileRSS for design theft. As we noted, the community was starting to rally around Reeder, as both Read It Later and Instapaper, two of the most popular bookmarking services which work with both apps, blocked MobileRSS from using their APIs as a show of support for Reeder. But MobileRSS had yet to respond. Now they have. And they’re going to do the right thing.
They’ve just sent the following statement to us:
We are submitting an update to MobileRSS immediately which will include modifications to the UI elements that most mimic Reeder. We respect the work that Reeder has done but are most concerned with serving users and improving MobileRSS for everyone. These improvements include ideas pioneered by Reeder, but we have current and upcoming features which are unique to our app not found in other RSS readers.
But to be clear, we’re taking immediate action to correct this and will remove the similarities to Reeder at once.
MobileRSS developers
While that’s obviously not an explicit admission of any wrongdoing, or even an apology, the move to re-submit and the statement alone are a clear acknowledgment that so-closely mimicking the design of Reeder was not a good idea.
The first part of the statement is a bit vague with the idea of “modifications” and talk of doing what’s best for their users, but the second paragraph directly states that “similarities” to Reeder will be removed at once.
We’ve reached out to Reeder developer Silvio Rizzi for his reaction and will update when we hear back.
Update: Here’s what Rizzi had to say:
I think this is just ridiculous. I mean, what were they thinking would happen?
Really, it’s quite simple, they should just do the right thing and remove the app from the store.
And yes, I asked Nibirutech to remove the app, no response of course. Still hoping that Apple will do something about this.
