This is from a couple of months ago but it came up after my previous post. It does seem like he doesn’t really like Voyager, but oh well.
I am confused. Didn’t he release the Apollo design specifications after the APIcalypse. People were always going to release copycat apps using that.
Edit : Seems I was wrong
He was asked if he would open source the project but from what I can tell he said no. It’s not like it was obligatory for him to do that anyways, but when you read some of the comments in the other thread, it feels like almost a demand coming from the community rather than an ask.
I was talking more about the UI specifications and not about open sourcing the entire app. In any case it seems I was wrong because I could find nothing relating to Christian sharing his code or specification relating to apollo’s UI.
This makes me respect @aeharding@lemmy.world even more because he was able to create an app pretty similar to Apollo(UI wise) by writing everything from scratch
He doesn’t like Voyager for good reason though; the app basically one-for-one copied what he had built for reddit but pointed it at Lemmy instead. If somebody took something I had developed and changed very little from the outside, I would be upset too.
I think he’s totally within reason to dislike what is essentially a ripoff of his intellectual property. That being said, I’d be surprised if he decides to make the developers have repercussions for following his design so closely.
Design wise yes it is a one to one copy, but Voyager was built from the ground up as a web app, which is completely different to Apollo’s “native Apple app” philosophy. So while it may seem at first “changed very little,” it is actually very different. He also isn’t interested in making his own “Apollo for Lemmy” so I think it’s fair to pass the torch down.
The design among all the Lemmy apps is essentially the same IMO. Far left you have your subscribed, bottom is the various sections… there’s not that much to it really.
It’s not as if Apollo reinvented UI. The elements are quite simple but done in an effective and easy to use way. Voyager using that philosophy is just them admitting it’s the best way to do it.