>when that person steals from DHH's company

So now using some design without permission is called stealing? so, copyright infringement is stealing or not?

I'd be interested in understanding why someone would vote this down. I know it's tangential to the discussion, but it's a really glaring hypocrisy. To call it "copyright infringement" in the context of digital media and "stealing" in the context of website design strikes me as disingenuous, at best. I tend to be obtuse when it comes to these matters, however. I'd love to hear some more subtle commentary on the matter.

while not always true, a lack of professionalism typically signals a lack of integrity.

I find it remarkable the extent to which this comment was down voted. I stand by my comments, and will even go one step further to explicitly state that I think DHH and Curebit handled this unprofessionally. I don't know any of the people involved, so I can't say a thing about their integrity, which isn't my point. How you handle yourself in situations like this signals certain things to people that they then interpret and use a data to form an opinion about you and your business.

I've posted elsewhere how the Curebit misstep caused me to form an opinion about the maturity of their product. I'm not going to bother of relating how DHH's response has changed my opinion of the 37Signals business, especially on HN given the ridiculous moderating practices related to anything remotely critical of 37Signals.

/r

I agree. I'm not sure where the ambiguity around professionalism came about. But, I truly doubt anyone misunderstood what you were saying and decided to take it apart on some weird technicality. DHH could have been the bigger man and I believe his words would have carried gravitas had that been the case. He has the right to publicly react how he likes, but it seemed a bit childish to me and didn't evoke any sense of empathy.

Yup, exactly my point. Thanks for the right words ;-)

I've been thinking this morning about the knee jerk moderation and failure to communicate in this thread. There's a strong undercurrent of "Internet entrepreneur" that makes up HN, and I'd expect the discourse here to reflect the manner in which people communicate in their business endeavours. Knee jerk reactions, pedantry and emotional dogma don't have much place in business.

I'd kinda hoped that there could be some discussion about professionalism, what it means and how we can apply it to what we do. It appears that I expect too much, or the wrong things from HN.

There is no single definition of "professionalism," and the word is therefore totally meaningless the way you use it.

I have found that "professionalism" is generally incompatible with honesty and integrity.

Professionals are judged on appearance and appearance of action: not on what they actually do and the consequences of their actions. Similarly, to act "professionally" often means to act against your personal beliefs, to suppress your emotion, to ignore empathy and to react coldly.

To be "business-like" is often to be cruel and socially irresponsible: that's "just business".

I would like to be judged by my demeanour rather than my appearance and on the consequence of my actions rather than my actions.