[nkassis]

This happened to me twice in the last year. The first time the it was mostly just copying the idea and that gave me a real kick in butt to work faster. Second time they went as far as taking my stylesheet (they couldn't copy my apps code since it's minified and obfuscated and I don't think they had enough skills to figure out how to undo that).

Both time I started by being annoyed and mad. Then I realize that someone stole from me so I must have done something they thought was good. Then I realized what I made is actually shit and the people who copied are not very bright about taking it :) and moved to fixing the bugs and bad design decisions I had taken.

The second copier pissed me off a little more because their stuff did things my app couldn't yet wrapping it in my shitty style was a dumb shortcut. They are trying to build a company on it, they should seriously put efforts into the look cause what I had done was thrown together in an hour. I just wish people innovated a little more that way I'd have something to take back.

All this is a great motivation booster to move faster. I think the author is right, it's necessary to have copy cats to prove the idea good.