The implication here, isn't so much that what was created was new, it's "Would this feature had been created had somebody else not shown GitHub a better way?"

Since the commit history for

https://github.com/notwaldorf/github-canned-responses/commit...

is fairly new, it's easy to believe this feature was in GitHub's pipeline for a while.

If this wasn't the case, it can sting from a brand perception point of view. GitHub is suppose to be synonymous with innovation, and if you start getting called out for copying, no matter how trivial, it will devalue your brand over time.

The question now is, how closely is GitHub looking at something like this:

https://github.com/stefanbuck/awesome-browser-extensions-for...

and other similar Chrome extensions.

Right now, they are in a damned if they do and damned if they don't, as the result of the dear GitHub letter.