This is the case for every website you visit, yet it doesn't seem to be a problem. Technology people often make the mistake of believing that the technology is

This is the case for every website you visit, yet it doesn't seem to be a problem. Technology people often make the mistake of believing that the technology is the product. I believe we've passed the time in computing where that is a requirement. Anyone can grab a text editor and hammer out some code. What makes a product great is the confluence of all the factors that you can't write in code. The application is part of the equation. I'm not arguing that the code can be bad; I'm arguing that you need more. For example, GitHub is driven by git. This is a tool that anyone can download and use. The entire GitHub interface is HTML/JS. I could run through and rip off every bit of their interface code and I'd be a large portion of the way toward running my own GitHub. There's the issue of the server-side code and scalability, but these are problems I can solve with a reasonable up-front investment and iterative problem-solving, just like everyone else. What I can't clone is the community and spirit of GitHub. If the success of your organization relies on the inability of your competitors to copy your product, you have a much bigger problem.