Do. Not. Do. This. For elaboration, here's your risk/reward calculation. Reward: you save N days worth of your present salary which you should spend on a chea

Do. Not. Do. This. For elaboration, here's your risk/reward calculation. Reward: you save N days worth of your present salary which you should spend on a cheapo laptop. Risk: you are planting an unrecoverable flaw deep in the heart of your company. It only matters if your startup does well, but if it does, it suddenly matters a lot. If you are in talks for an acquisition or funding round five years from now and this topic comes up in due diligence, your company is over. It does not matter whether you'd win the legal case -- and you wouldn't -- because there will not even be a legal case. The risk-averse counterparty you'll then be dealing with will nope-nope-NOPE out of that transaction and do business with someone who is capable of minimal levels of professionalism. Also, while I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings: given that there is no way to untaint the project you are presently working on, I think you're probably better off rm -rf'ing N weeks of work and starting over rather than taking the somewhat accelerated timeframe on a project which has an unfixable timebomb embedded in it.