A) If his employer had said, "Yeah, go ahead -- no problem," then there wouldn't have been a problem. B)If his employer had said, "We're all in favor of open-s

A) If his employer had said, "Yeah, go ahead -- no problem," then there wouldn't have been a problem. B)If his employer had said, "We're all in favor of open-source contributions and projects, but not when they compete against our core products, from which we make money," then they could have worked out a deal. Or not. But at least it wouldn't have been left up in the air like this. --- False dichotomy. They could have pretended to go with '(A)' and then sued him over it later when/if the product became popular/made money. He (the developer) also then exposes himself to risks that he otherwise might not (e.g. lazy lawyers that only act when prompted).