When people say "there are only so many ways to lay out a case" which I now have heard several times on this forum, I say yes, that is true, and that makes case layout ideas something valuable and to be respected. Because you know what? You can always go lay out your hardware according to ATX standards. Obviously layout is the most important aspect of a chassis.
Okay, I'm with your there.
Please, stop undervaluing the most valuable ideas in our community. Try to respect each other's work and their achievements. Celebrate their success, promote each other's ideas, and CREDIT them. It takes NOTHING away from our glory to credit the artists, engineers, and thinkers whose shoulders we stand on.
I like to think that we all do that, do you have any examples (even just generalised ones) that could cement how exactly you would want this to turn out? For example, if someone starts to sell a case that has the same layout as the S4, do you think they should credit you? If so, why? In some cases I would agree with you and in others I wouldn't.
If you see something you like, try to make it your own; put your own flair on it. Credit the source. I do think it is valuable to politely ask how something is different from what is available--not going on a witch hunt and torching the product of their passion, but test it. See if it is passion, or just shoddy plagiarism.
This community will dissolve very quickly if we don't, and the phrase "there are only so many ways to do X" will be the bell that signals the end.
Peace.
I agree that we should not trivialise or even encourage plagiarism, as much as we open ourselves up to it by developing ideas close to and with the community. But I also think that people are quick to jump to claims of being ripped off by someone else when really they weren't. But I don't know what angle you're coming from, so again, an example would be helpful.
But let's say I didn't stumble upon Project Orthrus and ended up designing a very similar chassis. Would that be a bad thing? What if one of our cases ended up being significantly more successful? What if mine--having started progress quite a way's after--was the one that came out on top in terms of sales/profit?
This is a good case in point that deserves discussion. So initially, there's of course no guilt in your position. You came up with an idea and transformed it into a product that you want to sell. If you never hear about the competitive product, make it to market and come out on top, clearly you did something better even if it was just marketing.
But, this being a small community still, that is very unlikely to happen. At some point, either of you is going to hear about the other, and then you've got a bit of a problem. You could of course try to fight, but I think that isn't in your own interest. In the end, the amount of customers you can have is limited, so cannibalising each others product isn't something that would benefit either of you.
I think the solution to something like this would be cooperation. For example, before going to a prototype stage, you could both agree to tell your followers about the other project and see which one is liked better and for what reason. If either of you comes out as a clear winner of that, congratulations, one of you just saved a bunch of money and a prototype that would've been wasted, the other got a few additional customers. Take the lessons you've learned and try something new, don't see that as defeat. If people are indifferent, you can assume that your cases, while being similar, have a different philosophy behind them and can coexist easily. Now you have healthy competition and a good reason to try and bring your product to market quicker and make it better than the competing version. This is exactly the way a free market should work and the way everyone benefits.
I know that this would be a very tough decision to make for most, but I believe it is the correct one.
The problem its it is almost impossible to search for an existing case layout. Unless someone else happens to have written the same textual description you are using to describe your layout (e.g. "a short GPU that is next to the motherboard and faces the opposite way using a riser" could cover a multitude of arrangements, and may not even turn up the one you are thinking of), or you happen to stumble across it by chance, you're unlikely to find a 'match' without directly showing your design to someone else who has happened to stumble upon an existing case with the same design. As
@zovc described, it is easily possible to come up independently with the same component layout as another case, and never know about it.
Which is exactly what the phrase "there's only so many ways to lay out PC components" entails. But I also agree with Josh that you should tell people where you got your inspiration from if you try to improve on the work of someone else. This can also be very helpful for yourself, because you can make additions to the design that the original creator doesn't want to or cannot make. For example, if you wanted to make a case like the S4, tell people that you want to do something similar, and ask them what they would want to improve about it. There's probably a market for a similar case with ODD support.
I think the argument is more around case construction and overall aesthetic rather than layout.
For example there are hundreds of cases on the market that use the standard ATX tower layout, but you can tell a Corsair case from for example a Phanteks case pretty obviously. They both have strong brand identity which allows them to both compete successfully in the same product category.
Yes, that is a very important point. Though some companies like Thermaltake don't like that idea and copy other brands design regularly as has happened to Fractal and Caselabs. And I think they're rightfully getting shit on for that.
Taking inspiration from a case layout cannot be avoided, as mentioned there are only so many layouts as
@Josh | NFC has mentioned. But what can be avoided are similar looking cases competing in the same category with the same type of construction/materials.
Not only can inspiration from other layouts not be avoided, but I also think it shouldn't be avoided. A layout is the functional basis of a case, but that is only part of it. The highly successful shoebox layout has the most incarnations in the SFF space and every single one of those cases is selling, because even with the same feature-set, people just have different taste in looks.
Your brand is important and I think as a community we should respect that and ensure we put effort into creating our own identity rather than fighting over layout.
I fully agree.
