even up to the acquisition, ViaWeb's source code wasn't that valuable. What was really valuable is the knowledge of the code that its developers have, and the relationships with the customers, the minds of the leaders who made the company successful, and the brand.
So, if a guy more connected than PG in the Valley at the time stole the code, and had some top notch Lisp guys study it and expand it, and had $$$ to spend for marketing, it would still be OK to take ViaWeb's code?
It's not that any or all of those things are an impossible secret sauce. For example, they guy could be an ex-employer, familiar with the source code AND with relations to existing customers.
I've never heard of anyone building and selling a closed-source project once they obtained the source for it
That's mostly because they would be sued to oblivion in a case like we describe. But in other cases, where they legally obtained the code to a project used by some business (e.g if it was open sourced) people HAVE built competing businesses. From MariaDB to Slashdot clones to OpenStack, to competing Unices, etc.
So, if a guy more connected than PG in the Valley at the time stole the code, and had some top notch Lisp guys study it and expand it, and had $$$ to spend for marketing, it would still be OK to take ViaWeb's code?
It's not that any or all of those things are an impossible secret sauce. For example, they guy could be an ex-employer, familiar with the source code AND with relations to existing customers.
I've never heard of anyone building and selling a closed-source project once they obtained the source for it
That's mostly because they would be sued to oblivion in a case like we describe. But in other cases, where they legally obtained the code to a project used by some business (e.g if it was open sourced) people HAVE built competing businesses. From MariaDB to Slashdot clones to OpenStack, to competing Unices, etc.