It's been a while since Apple's crack legal team made an appearance on the show, and the fans are getting restless. "Where are the lawsuits against iMac copycats?" they ask. "Where are the cease-and-desist orders against well-meaning but technically copyright-infringing web sites?" Well, it's not exactly the same thing, but you want it, we got it: Apple Legal's latest target is the Linuxy Themes.org site, who was recently ordered to pull all Aqua-styled Linux visual themes from its download server. (Never let it be said that AtAT doesn't bow to viewer demands and resort to craven pandering for the sake of the ratings.)

Evidently, Apple took exception to at least four themes posted to the site: Aqua, AquaX, eMac, and eMac-GTK. While we haven't seen the themes in question, our understanding is that they revamped the Linux user interface to resemble that of Mac OS X. We can see where Apple (and by Apple we mean, of course, Steve) might get a wee bit upset about competing operating systems swiping the lickability of his own pet project months before the 1.0 release is even out the door; however, we're not entirely sure on what legal basis Apple might object. The company has lost on the whole "look and feel" thing before (hence, Windows), so we assume the themes in question are more than just Aqua-inspired; perhaps they contain direct screenshots of Aqua widgets, or include the sacrosanct Apple logo itself (a transgression that probably gets Steve on the horn to the legal department faster than any other).

Whatever the reason, judging by the comments posted at Themes.org, Apple's not winning any converts from the Linux crowd by suppressing Aquafied themes. Most of the participants just see this as yet another heavy-handed "Big Company Squashes The Little Guys" move on Apple's part, which of course doesn't play too play with the open source crowd. Granted, these people are all making judgments without ever even seeing Apple's letter requesting that the themes be pulled, so their opinions are being based purely on speculation; still, if Apple was ever counting on Mac OS X's open source Darwin core and BSD underpinnings to capture some market share from the Linux brethren, moves like this (necessary though they might be, from an intellectual property standpoint) aren't helping the cause.