[inlined]

> but in reality the only thing that was copied was the docs for the API, not the API itself

You never know. When someone ripped off Parse we were able to deduce which version of our JS SDK was ripped off by which bugs weren’t fixed. We had a weird moral dilemma: we were upset at the copycat yet concerned that their users had security vulnerabilities unpatched.

[Edit: added quote to clarify to what I was responding]

[femto113]

In the mid-nineties a company named Avanti stole code from Cadence Design Systems (where I worked at the time, though I had no involvement in the case). This was first discovered by an engineer noticing that error messages in the two systems were similar in ways that made no intuitive sense. Case was unusual in that several Avanti executives actually wound up going to jail for the theft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_Design_Systems,_Inc._v...

[mirimir]

If they didn't catch bugs, maybe they also wouldn't catch booby-traps. Are there examples where developers have done that?

[ChickeNES]

FTDI modified the driver for their USB<->RS232 chips so that it would brick counterfeits: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/10/ftdis...

[mirimir]

So not one that worked out well.

The article discusses Microsoft's anti-piracy measures. And it brings back horrible memories. So I had this server, running Windows Server 2000. And there was a nearby lightning strike, which bricked the motherboard.

But hey, service contract. Except that the company had gone through reorganization. So they sent me a motherboard that was comparable and compatible with the box. But it had a different seller code, so my copy of Windows Server 2000 wouldn't install.

Microsoft couldn't/wouldn't fix that. So I had to return the replacement motherboard, wait for another replacement, and install it. But hey, it all worked out in the end.

[jimcsharp]

Yeah, that's DRM by another name. I'd be worried about doing it wrong and affecting customers.