Personally, I feel like when someone shares an idea that they don't build on, it's sort of free stuff that holds no value to them. They probably didn't mean to

Personally, I feel like when someone shares an idea that they don't build on, it's sort of free stuff that holds no value to them. They probably didn't mean to "steal" it. It's like a broken car you don't use that they sold off to someone. It's rude to do it without asking, but they might have felt you just didn't value it. Also, as a person who has mentored plenty of teams, I see the same ideas happen everywhere. Most hackathons usually have some tiny variation of the same idea. I've seen some situation where a team actually proposed doing something I was working on for 4 months, and there was some awkward moment where I considered telling them, because I was afraid they'd think I stole the idea. Thankfully, neither of us got the idea off the ground.