I was pretty shocked by his reaction. I would think that other people copying a new paradigm his company created would be a complement. At least, that's how I would take it.
Well, being the sole designer/developer working alone and restless for three+ months I can say it wasn't lazy. The other two things are up to you to decide.
The paradigm of the pagination, and the idea of a system for programmatically creating editorial layout is definitely worth stealing and I think it's fully fair to build products that do this.
What would frustrate me if I was at Flipboard is the aesthetic similarity. It actually looks like a Flipboard branded product, due to choices in color, layout, format, and typography. That's not building on the innovation of Flipboard, it's building on the identity of Flipboard. The only real benefits of that:
* Skipping the process of developing a unique identity (lazy)
* Not having to have a vision to develop a unique identity (uncreative)
* Gain unearned associations with Flipboard (pathetic)
I saw a human powered ornithopter in the news recently. Obviously that doesn't answer the question, "Can flapping wings power flight?" but it does answer the question, "Can a human's muscles power flapping winged flight?"
The creativity here is getting the job done in Html5, it answers an implementation question, not an HCI question.
The context is the flipboard people having a whinge because this copies 'their' scrolling technique, I wasn't dismissing the project as a whole as uncreative.
"Lazy, uncreative and pathetic."
I was pretty shocked by his reaction. I would think that other people copying a new paradigm his company created would be a complement. At least, that's how I would take it.