Nice sarcasm. The fact still remains that maybe DHH should take a deep breath and remember back before he was a millionaire. I'm by no means condoning what Curebit has done but unless DHH tried to contact them discreetly and they told him to go hell, I think maybe he could have taken it down a notch before he went roadhouse on these guys.
I think what you are trying to do away with is something fundamental to DHH/37 Signals. They think they got to where they are because of who they are, and they've gone on to write several books and blog posts on the matter.
I am personally not a fan of their attitude, but there are a lot of people enabling them.
This is a little beyond the pale and I fail to see why DHH should contact them discreetly. No, I don't like DHH's attitude sometimes but lifting code straight from someone's site is just so brain-dead it defies belief. The vast majority of developers would certainly have a look at other peoples' layouts but lifting code straight is just unreal.
This will be controversial, but if it were real programming code i would be angry. Since it's just html/css, static stuff, one may say it's not a big deal. In fact that was curebit's first response: they asked if they should keep the code and just add credit. I know it's wrong, but in the broad internet ethics it seems to be considered a certain form of fair use.
"if it were real programming code i would be angry " -> the work of "programmers" is worth plenty, but the work of designers is worth zilch. To be fair, this is also the attitude taken by Curebit.
