Well dam, was going to jump in on this but the new design is just meh. If you're just making ~10 mostly for yourself, you should just go with the design that you like the most regardless of community backlash.
I do agree with this statement.
Are we seriously encouraging cloning and copying now? We should be better than that.
I'm sure people will buy the original design. Just as people will buy all the Android phones copying the iPhone X's notch. But does that what we want this scene to become? People copying each other without any attribution or gratitude?
There are more than a few ways to design a box. That is the entire raison d'être of this board.
If OP wants the reputation of a Duck cloner who simply takes one of Duck's CADs and cut it down to fit the 660 layout (which is easier than you'd think. I tried it before.), then sure go ahead.
OP is also more than welcomed to go back to the drawing board and create a more attractive design than the current one. That's what ICs are for, gathering feedbacks and iterating.
The new design could be construed to take aesthetic elements from a:
KBD75
XD84
XD24
Mira SE
AMJ96
TGR Jane (With diffuser)
TGR 910
Red Scarf III/ZZ96
LZ CLS
The list of tall cases with mid-sized bezels using an acrylic defuser could go on really - As well as that, some of these cases have an extremely similar bottom case design to the Owl's new design. If anything, the new design is yet again a copy of other designs.
The whole
"Only Duck can do that!" shtick makes no sense when the alternative is to go with a design that's even more wide spread. Not to mention that both the TADA68's alu and plastic case are almost the exact same as the Duck design:
But we as a community seem to have embraced this board without ****ting a brick? At what point are we allowed to say
"Well X design element hasn't been used by *insert maker here* for awhile, so now it's okay someone else to use it"? Customizing being the niche that it is, it really makes zero sense that any one person should
"own" the way a keyboard looks.
I for one would still love to see the original design and would 100% purchase it.