PS: In the U.S. (if not the rest of the English speaking world?), if you want to use an honorific for a woman but don't know which she uses, always use "Ms.", never ever "Miss." "Miss" implies a woman is unmarried; "Mrs." implies that she is married and the surname is her husband's; "Ms.", appropriately for professional communication, makes no assumptions about her marital status.
I was also quite impressed by the tone of the message from Mailchimp legal - probably the clearest, most polite takedown request I've seen.
If this situation escalated it could look sloppy on their part if they didn't handle it properly with the correct resources from the beginning.
There is no reason why this issue at hand can't be handled in a professional manner - in this case by an actual lawyer.
I've received a number of C&D and this to me is by far the most level-headed and polite that I've seen in a long time.
Just because you didn't expect a response form a lawyer doesn't mean its "aggressive" by default.
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html
MailChimp made it very clear they realise his intent was not malicious, and the language of the letter further shows this. He reproduced their UI (branding included) without permission and posted it online as open source. The way he has handled this (especially the ranting blog post naming MailChimp's lawyer) is extremely unprofessional. If anything needs to be boycotted it's his consulting business, not MailChimp.
Your response reflects poorly on you. I would say it was fair to mention your employer as it's listed on your public github profile, and it isn't clear that your employer isn't aware. Additionally, I'd imagine you'll be receiving more removal requests from the other sites you replicate.
Also, releasing your files under the MIT license prohibits you from restricting them to "educational purposes", at least to my understanding, but I could be incorrect here.
But ultimately, there's no legally binding rules about using the MIT license. I can "use" the MIT license and then say, "Only cats who can ride motorcycles can use this code", and then, while MY license is "based" on the MIT license, it now has a totally valid motorcycle cat restriction. Cause I added one.
Publishing PSDs of someone else's website—regardless of who made the PSD—is a dick move. Doubly so given that the authors resources contain the original companies branding and image resources ripped right from the original pages.
There's nothing in your little agreements—or lack of one with MailChimp—giving you the right to parade around as if they have harmed you.
That is Allan's right, and Heroku's right. But Allan can only speak for himself, Heroku can only speak for Heroku. So while it's good that you've asked them for their opinion, they have no agency and confer no expectations as to what MailChimp does or does not do.
You're not really giving people a choice if you expect only one answer when you ask them for permission, you know. ;)
But you need to decide whether you're asking permission or getting offended. I don't think you can have it both ways.
edit: you do misattribute them (e.g. "Facebook Timeline UI by Luke Chesser" https://github.com/lukechesser/Popular-UIs/ )
Had someone from the MailChimp design or development team reached
out and asked me to take the resource down, I totally would have understood.
I greatly admire their work and respect their talents immensely.
An argument from a legal department is a threat. And if it's not actually a threat, it's certainly a very significant perceived threat.
And lawyers and society definitely understand that.
The letter itself wasn't terrible, but it definitely contained a threat, and claiming it is a tone argument denies that.
Also, do you have a reference to PG's "hierarchy of disagreement"? Sounds interesting.
People get defensive when it appears they're being attacked. The "if you'd have asked nicely" response is, in my experience, the best response to give to a random being an asshole. Either they'll double down (confirming your suspicions), or they'll realize they came across wrong and rephrase.
Of course they chose to go through their legal department, it's their job, not the designers. You can't seriously have lost respect for MailChimp because a lawyer was doing her job. Maybe the designers were too busy, oh I don't know, designing?
"Further, while your intentions appear good, those who download the UI file may not act so altruistically. For example, a nefarious downloader may use the file to set up a fake website to lure unsuspecting users to log in or to try to trade off their own service or product as part of our brand (5). We’ve seen both of these situations happen before, so they aren’t just products of our paranoid imagination."
What the OP has done is take someone else's work, duplicate it, and post it online for free without their consent. Then get all bothered when the company did what companies do, ask their lawyer to sort it out.
And the lawyer sorted it out in the nicest possible goddamn way I've ever seen a lawyer sort something like this out.
That others were OK with it doesn't really matter. That's up to each team, each company, and one saying "OK" doesn't automatically make every other company obligated to say OK.
All that matters is the OP took someone else's hard work, copied it, and posted it online without consent.
Also, he wanted someone from MailChimp's design or development team to reach out to him? Really? Maybe they're busy, you know, designing and developing things! This is not a design or development issue. They have legal council to worry about copyright and brand dilution issues.
MailChimp's concerns are quite valid, and to an extent you have to enforce IP issues, but OP is right that this happens all over the internet. If you lookup 'Dropbox' on Dribbble, you'll see tons of reproductions and remixes of their UI. I see OP's PSD as something made out of respect, and something provided to the community as an educational resource.
That doesn't change MailChimp's legal rights -- but regardless of who is right and wrong, I think a lot can be accomplished among adults having collaborative conversations. I think MailChimp is asking "How can we protect our IP?" instead of "How can we protect our IP while continuing to engage the designer and developer community?"
Had someone from the MailChimp design or
development team reached out and asked me
to take the resource down, I totally would
have understood.
That said, what are the rights around "clean room" implementation of website designs? If I simply pull up a site on another monitor, and build a clone of it from scratch (omit the logos of course), what are my rights?
Sadly, it appears the Popular UIs guy didn't even bother removing obviously trademarked and identifying logos. His argument that "sharing PSDs is a great way to learn" doesn't explain why he left logos in the work.