News and Reviews > Image Manager Shootout

Xnview vs. IrfanView - integrity issue examined

<< < (4/8) > >>

Carol Haynes:
Maybe the XnView position is that they don't want (or can't be bothered) to get involved in a mud slinging match that can only flare up into a web wide flame war.

Whatever the merits of Irfan's argument he needs to get over it and get a life or else take XnView to court for infringement of copyright.

I doubt he'll get anywhere with the latter option and he certainly wouldn't win under the classic 'look'n'feel' argument since XnView has a completely different (and lets be honest a much more attractive) approach to GUI design, and as Irafn says himself it serves a different function too.

He can't have it all ways! Either XnView is a ripoff or it isn't - but I can't see how something that is different in look and function can be considered a rip off.

Having said all that all application developers pick and choose what is good and useful out there to include in their own apps.  Corel PaintShop uses loads of stuff from Adobe PhotoShop (as do many image manipulation apps even to the point of supporting the same plugins). Corel Painter IX onwards even adopts the GUI of Photoshop pretty much lock stock and barrel. No one would accuse Corel of stealing Adobe's intellectual property - just that GUIs have a certain consistency and functional similarity for the sake of the end user. Similarly Adobe has taken note of Painter's real media in PhotoShop.

Horses for courses I think - no one out there is developing in a vacuum.

Dormouse:
if there was such impropriety in the past,-Steven Avery (April 26, 2008, 09:18 AM)
--- End quote ---

May or may not be. It's my impression that Irfan explicitly mentions those points he believes he can prove. He may suspect, or have only circumstantial evidence for, a whole lot more. If he doesn't, its hard to see where the extent of the anger comes from.

I have both IrfanView and XNView - but I use both of them very rarely. I use Dopus for everyday image viewing and Faststone for anything in a bit more depth. So I don't think I am biased one way or the other.

With the evidence available, I don't feel able to believe bad of either. Something is not right in the situation, but I have no idea how big that something is or how to apportion any 'blame'.

Steven Avery:
It's my impression that Irfan explicitly mentions those points he believes he can prove. He may suspect, or have only circumstantial evidence for, a whole lot more. -Dormouse
--- End quote ---

Well I haven't seen any real implications of this, the accusation is more of design features and small-time interface stuff (dialogs, screen look-a-likes).  I doubt that they are written with the same tools, that there are any coding issues, and there is no reason to reverse engineer anything.

As for the legal issues mentioned by Carol ("take XnView to court" ..if its illegal, sue, othewise be quiet) that is a non-issue, and diversionary.  Ethics is not always what is legal.  I stay away from a lot of people and companies who haven't been caught for what they are doing. And legally, even if it were far worse a question, this is small-time stuff, companies with freeware, with countries far away.  And nobody is alleging illegal code-stealing, stuff of that legal nature. 

Try to sue a Chinese company for copyright infringement or 100 other things and see how far it gets.  Does that mean you shouldn't warn about some unsavory activities if they come out of China ? 

And that is why Irfan should better avoid the word "steal" instead of copied or some other less charged words, since stealing implies illegality.  Since Irfan is presumably still checking this thread, perhaps he will take that into consideration, and change his wording.  He might also acknowledge at the same place where he accuses that the products have many differences in interface and function as well as similarities.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Carol Haynes:
As for the legal issues mentioned by Carol ("take XnView to court" ..if its illegal, sue, othewise be quiet), that is a non-issue, and diversionary.
-Steven Avery (April 26, 2008, 10:30 AM)
--- End quote ---

Actually pretty much what I said - the point I was making really was that a one sided argument leaves him angry and frustrated. If he can't do anything about it then it is better to let it drop and get on with life in a positive and more productive way - for his own sanity and health.

If he has evidence for what he has written perhaps a simple paper displaying that evidence would suffice to warn others of the issue - but getting steamed up over a number of years about evidence he has is not productive for him either, making him come across as aggressive and defensive.

Curt:
... (for example: XnView has been stealing/cloning features and whole dialogs from IrfanView, for 7+ years).
-Steven Avery (April 23, 2008, 09:29 AM)
--- End quote ---

One thing XnView did not steal is the full Unicode support. XnView is wonderful in many ways, but I find it embarrassing how many file name characters it cannot handle. Characters that Microsoft and IrfanView will handle without any problems. Just one example: "ما ذكرفرحتن حتى من by _ ♥ ~ β@ЯβŸÄĦ ~ ♥ _.jpg" will not open in XnView. If I try to remove the problem-causing characters, one by one, I'll have to shorten the name to "by_@_.jpg"!!! >Western Only< may not be a problem to Americans etcetera, but to me it has been a problem a little too often.
 :down:


Edit: 'Latin' replaced with 'Western'.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page