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Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

smartcar.com

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Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#401

Post by gonational »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #21

This may be a silver lining - a competitor has shown that the work you have done, exactly the work you have done is worth 55 million in VC funding. There are enough people on here who can point you in the right direction, or arrange introductions. Spend at least one of those millions on PR and lawyers to ensure it's clear who has the moral high ground, and who should be hired if a company has to choose between you -…

If the work SmartCar had done was worth $55 million, I suspect Company X (or their VC) would have used their money to purchase this company for $55 million instead of deciding to waste the time cloning it.

Instead, think of the work as a means to an end, the end being revenue.

Company X was able to raise $55 million because they were able to demonstrate that the potential market could support the revenue necessary to justify such funds, and that they could use the work already done by SmartCar to get to market more quickly.

Now, in my opinion this is very shady and should be grounds for a lawsuit, but in terms of raw business savvy, the $55 million is for a smart business that knows how to execute for less. If money raised was in direct correlation to a quality product or the ability to produce such a product, rather than in direct correlation with e.g., the team (cabal?) involved and their ability to make returns for investors, then we’d be living in a very different world.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#402

Post by simias »

earenndil wrote: post #162
dep_b wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people built the world's most popular operating system doing just that - copying Java's API.

But not their API documentation. They even copied the exact example UDID.

Copying the headers make sense even if you rewrite the implementation from scratch, it gives a very basic layer of verification that your implementation matches the original (if the declarations in the prototype clash with your rewrite, there's probably something wrong in there). It doesn't sound like a particularly bad or unethical technical decision to me, at least as long as it's done otherwise completely legally (which has been a very expensive question to settle).

Copy/pasting docs and rewording everything to try and hide that fact is a lot lazier and shadier IMO.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#404

Post by stcredzero »

mkhalil wrote: post #345
stcredzero wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, to be fair, I wrote the comment, then immediately thought, okay that could be misinterpreted, then added the parenthetical right afterwards. I didn't do an "(EDIT:)" because I thought no one would have come in so soon. The poor sap might have fallen prey to my foolish decision to use an optimistic concurrency protocol.

I commend you for your honesty. Also, I don't think that he was totally wrong in calling it out, but the phrasing he used was very unnecessary. It would be better phrased as a question, like: "Don't you think it's racist to refer to them as "The Chinese"?" or something less dumb than accusing you of racism. I understand HN is a tech place, but since race can play a factor in practically all subjects, it can be a heal…

it can be a healthy discussion if spoken about maturely

Knee jerk rapid reactions aren't an example of "spoken about maturely." The normalization and acceptance of such reactions is what leads to toxic community atmospheres and the "social epistemological catastrophe" of a witch-hunt mentality.

In other words, "shoot first, ask questions later" is against the stated policy around these parts of the Principle of Charity. Just look around the Internet, and tell me what you see in this regard.

I'm obliged to link this again, for the good of all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#405

Post by znpy »

da_chicken wrote: post #385
jaxn wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree with the original comment, particularly for products that are still evolving. We have a competitor who copies our features, but they don't know why we built the feature. The result is they end up copying the wrong stuff or tweaking the feature in a way that completely misses the point. But, I agree with you in that creating a feature isn't an advantage in and of itself. Rather, it is the domain expert…

Apple is the perfect counter example here. Apple wasn't the first company to make an MP3 player, but the generic term is basically 'iPod'. Apple wasn't the first company to make a smartphones or touchscreens, but the generic term for a touchscreen smartphone is basically 'iPhone'. Apple wasn't the first company to make a tablet, but the generic term is basically 'iPad'. Apple didn't invent high resolution displays fo…

> The generic term is basically iThing.

Are you from the US? Because here in .eu "iThing" is definitely not the generic term for pretty much anything.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#406

Post by int_19h »

asveikau wrote: post #388
da_chicken wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is the perfect counter example here. Apple wasn't the first company to make an MP3 player, but the generic term is basically 'iPod'. Apple wasn't the first company to make a smartphones or touchscreens, but the generic term for a touchscreen smartphone is basically 'iPhone'. Apple wasn't the first company to make a tablet, but the generic term is basically 'iPad'. Apple didn't invent high resolution displays fo…

I feel like some of these examples could be US-centric phenomena. We in the US tend to confuse brand names with product categories, and in other markets the Apple brand doesn't have the same dominance in most of these.

At least the iPod/Pad/Phone stuff isn't US-centric - these are colloquially used to refer players/tablets/smartphones in many different languages.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#407

Post by schwap »

ruchitmatalia wrote: post #393

Besides the blatant copy. I think Otonomo needs to decide whether they using oauth v1 or v2. Point being, the quality of work is speaking for itself. JSON FROM OTONOMO ------------------- https://consent.otonomo.io/oauth/v1/authorize?response_type=... curl https://consent.otonomo.io/oauth/v1/token \ Documents Shows ------------------- response_type This value must be set to code. OAuth2 outlines multiple authorizatio…

It looks to me like they only use OAuth2 (based on the authorize/token endpoints), they just oddly decided to version their OAuth2 api.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#408

Post by znpy »

Meh.

APIs are not copyright-able. See the whole Google-vs-Oracle Java debacle.

You can try and go the bad-press route but there's not really much you can do. That's how the free market works, basically. Also, if an idea is good, it would have attracted competition sooner or later.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#410

Post by hunta2097 »

asveikau wrote: post #388
da_chicken wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is the perfect counter example here. Apple wasn't the first company to make an MP3 player, but the generic term is basically 'iPod'. Apple wasn't the first company to make a smartphones or touchscreens, but the generic term for a touchscreen smartphone is basically 'iPhone'. Apple wasn't the first company to make a tablet, but the generic term is basically 'iPad'. Apple didn't invent high resolution displays fo…

I feel like some of these examples could be US-centric phenomena. We in the US tend to confuse brand names with product categories, and in other markets the Apple brand doesn't have the same dominance in most of these.

I was going to make this point. While having a huge market share, Apple doesn't dominate in the EU, so generic terms are more common.

Here in the UK people just have "Smartphones" and "tablets" (tho I do hear people calling generic tablets "iPad" sometimes).

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