I was rather surprised on Thursday to be shown a newly released free app on Android Market that looked suspiciously like one of my paid apps. To me and other observers it appeared that this app was simply a modified version of Appmonger being touted by someone who claimed to have paid somebody over four thousand dollars to write it for her so that she could give it away for nothing.
I provide more details about the whole situation over at the Rectangular Software blog. The episode has left me somewhat confused both as to the motivations of this individual and the extent to which she and/or her coder have ripped off my work. Clearly (screenshots to the right to judge for yourself) this app is more than just inspired by or competing with Appmonger but after running the app and digging into the .apk I am now uncertain how much code, if any, has been copied/reused. She may actually have paid somebody else a tidy sum to write the whole thing from scratch. That sounds even more insane to me than just cracking somebody else’s code and passing it off as your own. Why go to all the effort of building an entire app without putting your own stamp on it to avoid any accusations of plagiarism or copyright infringement?