FreeScout Received a DMCA Request From Help Scout CEO, Nick Francis
On November 29, 2018 Help Scout’s free plan will be retired and for all users help desk will cost least $24 per month.
Those who need a good hassle-free managed service will continue using Help Scout, but there are also those who can not afford to pay $24 per month for a help desk. So now non-profits and small businesses who were using a free Help Scout account are desperately looking for the free Help Scout alternative.
On November 28, 2018 FreeScout community received a DMCA warning from Help Scout co-founder and ceo Nick Francis:
Hey folks, Nick here, co-founder and ceo at Help Scout. I’m creating an issue because, as has been pointed out, the owner(s) of this project seem to be anonymous.
I’ve personally spent thousands of hours, and the last 7.5 years of my life crafting Help Scout with my co-founders. We, along with our 80+ colleagues around the world, care deeply for this product and the customers that use it.
I have no intent to bully anyone. I have no problem with anyone that wishes to build an open source help desk that’s inspired by Help Scout. I think that’d be great. But in my view, this project has crossed the line of inspiration into violation of our intellectual property.
The screenshots and commits like this one make it clear to me that portions of this project were copy/pasted. In addition, the design of Help Scout is our intellectual property, and surely it can’t be disputed that this looks exactly like our product.
I’d like to propose that you take a reasonable amount of time to create a design and user experience that is completely unique to Freescout and does not violate our intellectual property. Hell, feel free to improve upon what we made! I think 90 days should be enough time, and I’d be happy to advise on this process if it’s helpful.
I don’t want to take another route, but we are prepared to take legal action if necessary. I sure hope it doesn’t come to that. Thanks for listening.
Sometimes Brightwurks Inc (Help Scout) politics can be a little aggressive, so it would be better if open source community involved in FreeScout development follow the request and make appropriate changes to the FreeScout look and feel. So if you are a talented designer please share your ideas and contributions on GitHub.
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FreeScout Team
