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Bessemer & Co. likely know that Otonomo is building a drop-in replacement copy of Smartcar's API. I'm not sure there's anything terribly controversial about tha

Bessemer & Co. likely know that Otonomo is building a drop-in replacement copy of Smartcar's API. I'm not sure there's anything terribly controversial about that, although reasonable people may disagree. Bessemer & Co. probably don't know that the docs are literally being copied though.

jacquesm 7y ago
A literal copy would show up during tech DD. If they did not flag it that's their problem, if they did flag it it is still their problem.
- WillPostForFood 7y ago
  How do we know that the investment predates the public api documentation?
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Bessemer's last round was a series 'B', by then the bits and pieces would have all been in place, whether it was public or not isn't even all that important. It does raise an interesting question though: how will the OP prove that their work is the original, that might hinge on a lot of unknowns, more difficult still if the work was originally lifted by an employee of the company and then passed on to Otonomo with them being the unwitting recipients.
    - WillPostForFood 7y ago
      Yes, seems likely, but user documentation often comes really late in the process.
      - ch4ch4 7y ago
        However, the Smartcar CEO replied in another thread that they use Readme.io for their docs, which can autogenerate using Swagger, which automatically parses hints in code. So it is definitely possible that the codebase got stolen and the perps missed changing a few hints, resulting in the Otonomo samples generating identical sample code, as shown.
phkahler 7y ago
>> Bessemer & Co. likely know that Otonomo is building a drop-in replacement copy of Smartcar's API. I'm not sure there's anything terribly controversial about that, although reasonable people may disagree. Anyone considering that should be aware that Oracle vs Google is still not finished.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Even a drop-in replacement does not normally go so far as to have verbatim copied documentation. Which makes me wonder how far the copying went, if they actually obtained the code as well.

jacquesm 7y ago

A literal copy would show up during tech DD. If they did not flag it that's their problem, if they did flag it it is still their problem.

WillPostForFood 7y ago
How do we know that the investment predates the public api documentation?
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Bessemer's last round was a series 'B', by then the bits and pieces would have all been in place, whether it was public or not isn't even all that important. It does raise an interesting question though: how will the OP prove that their work is the original, that might hinge on a lot of unknowns, more difficult still if the work was originally lifted by an employee of the company and then passed on to Otonomo with them being the unwitting recipients.
  - WillPostForFood 7y ago
    Yes, seems likely, but user documentation often comes really late in the process.
    - ch4ch4 7y ago
      However, the Smartcar CEO replied in another thread that they use Readme.io for their docs, which can autogenerate using Swagger, which automatically parses hints in code. So it is definitely possible that the codebase got stolen and the perps missed changing a few hints, resulting in the Otonomo samples generating identical sample code, as shown.

phkahler 7y ago

>> Bessemer & Co. likely know that Otonomo is building a drop-in replacement copy of Smartcar's API. I'm not sure there's anything terribly controversial about that, although reasonable people may disagree. Anyone considering that should be aware that Oracle vs Google is still not finished.

jacquesm 7y ago
Even a drop-in replacement does not normally go so far as to have verbatim copied documentation. Which makes me wonder how far the copying went, if they actually obtained the code as well.