I agree with your assessment (in comment I'm immediately replying to)

I'd like to add that I think Dustin wanted to share ideas in his blog post. I think his copy got in the way of what was important - the ideas that made the blog engine facilitate his writing. In this case, these ideas are somewhat analagous to the algorithm. They were nothing more than an idea; dustin recognized this and he was giving them away.

But when the whole product has been copied from a visual perspective down to the tooling and platform, you've effectively replicated the whole experience. It goes a bit further than aesthetics in this case and is wholly under-appreciated by those who do not have 'respect' design, so to speak.

Edited: missing a word.