[mrgordon]

Meh not really.

The API client is MIT licensed but that doesn't mean the API itself is MIT licensed. Smartcar obviously would not release their server code as it is proprietary so the question becomes whether it is unethical or illegal to copy the design of it without seeing the code. Most people would also say it is unethical to copy your competitor's docs down to the examples and randomly generated tokens.

Note that the docs in the blog post are not the same as the markdown document in the repo that appears to be MIT licensed.

Since they copied the docs verbatim, I suspect they will change the docs very soon. I'd be quite ashamed if I were Otonomo. Whether they have to pay financial penalties or admit guilt in court, we'll see.

[itake]

This situation makes me think of the video game industry and people recreating self hosted World of Warcraft servers by reversing the client code.

Blizzard was able to shut down the private servers.

https://github.com/mangoszero/server

https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/07/...

[taneq]

There are still plenty of active private servers running.

[Archit3ch]

> Most people would also say it is unethical to copy your competitor's docs down to the examples and randomly generated tokens.

<standard not-a-lawyer disclaimer> Would it be okay if they changed the tokens and kept everything else? Who benefits from Otonomo changing the examples?

Assuming a REST API is a non-enforceable contract for the sake of interoperability, it doesn't make sense for any party agreeing to it to "own" the contract itself, even if they were involved in writing it.