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Comment by sangeeth96 | Hacker News Reader

That shouldn't matter. They might even have a Linux version in the works, given they are doing Windows now. They are within their rights to ask you to get rid of it. You also seem to be using their brand assets like the logo. I get your intention and love what you were able to accomplish but if you intend for this to grow, you are better off doing this now.

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> They are within their rights to ask you to get rid of it.

Only the logo and name. The functionality side should be perfectly fine, there are oodles of precedent for reversing a workable program from someone's commercial API: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....

But prolly can still go after if you resemble it closely enough in terms of looks? I get the API point though, thanks.

Eh, probably not. There are any number of things that look like it. The appearance is the natural outcome of its functionality.

True, but a cease & desist will likely include the demand that they cease all operations, and they might be willing to fight that in court, possibly seek damages, etc however likely or unlikely it is that it would hold up. They can pay for a few hours of a lawyer's time to intimidate the OP.

It should matter that it's a non-commercial hobby project. It's nice to see the light pushback.

They use react-native, no? One of the main issues is that all react-native implementations are half baked and dead.

The launcher UI is AppKit while the extension APIs allow third-party developers to write them in TS and a React subset. They have a custom renderer for React that turns that into AppKit primatives. So similar in concept but custom and specific to their usecase.

That makes sense -- I'll go figure something out, thanks for the explanation!

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