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Forgive me, but all I really see that’s ripped of are...some API docs? You can tell they copied them but this is likely the work of a single lazy employee rath
by iamleppert 8y ago
Forgive me, but all I really see that’s ripped of are...some API docs?
You can tell they copied them but this is likely the work of a single lazy employee rather than indicative of an entire company.
Consider that the value of a company is more than API documentation. It’s the customers, the business relationships, and the employees. The actual tech is last in the things that are valuable.
If you want to survive in this industry you need to understand that eventually someone is going to copy your product. They might even do it better than you. Unless you can prove fraud, there’s nothing you can do. There’s no crime in copying someone's public API and offering an identical service; people do it all the time.
Instead of worrying about your competitor and some lazy employee they hired there, worry about your own product, customers, business. Start planning your next feature or next way you’re going to WOW your customers. That’s your real job.
Now get to it!
- hw 8y agoIt's not just the API docs that are copied, but the API structure itself. Then again, the examples shown in the article are just OAuth flows, which are a standard and docs are going to look similar regardless. But I totally agree with not worry about competitors. There's always going to be people copying you, and if they do that means you're doing something right. Think Stripe - I'm sure they're a huge source of 'inspiration' for a lot of sites when it comes to design and documentation.
- martinhath 8y agoIt is curious that while HN as a whole seems to be on the same side regarding the Google vs. Oracle case, they also are quick to jump on this bandwagon, but in the other direction. Is it lame to blatantly copy someones API docs? Sure. But even looking at the screenshots in their blog post, which I presume is meant to highlight this issue, it's clear that there are changes as well, so it looks more like derivative work than just blind copying (I'm not sure if there's a meaningful legal distinction here, but it feels more ethical).
- dmitryminkovsky 8y agoSame thought here but fwiw to me it seems that there are plenty of people on this thread who are on the Google side of this discussion.