A potential competitor wants me to build the same app for them.
Advise?

Build the same app, but with critical service and memory issues. Take their money and laugh at them. If possible, build a time bomb into it where it will deadlock on some fixed date combinatorial to make it hard to identify.

@SortOfTested 👌🏻

Do they know they are your competitor?

@SortOfTested Do you provide consultancy services on evil matters? I need one right now.

@N00bPancakes Yeah. That's how they found me.

@wifi That's a bold move...

@wifi
What's evil? If someone if dumb enough to ask their competition to make the same app for them, they deserve to be the weak sister and exists to be nothing greater than competitive differentiation. It's the same as all these enteprise orgs buying the same software and assuming they have an actual competitive advantage.

Advise: do it properly but charge them a ton.

The thing is that everything is better th time around. So their app will likely be better than yours, thanks to all the time you aldready invested in doing the first run

You might get envious of their version and feel like you gotta rebuild your own one

@jiraTicket
This is a potential minefield. Once you build it for them, unless they sign a contract saying you own the code it's their IP. You've effectively sold them your app v2, along with the baseline IP and any and all patentables. If you give them something better, you can't use it yourself without getting sued.

@SortOfTested Yep.

I assume that could be handled with some special contract stating that his original project is the main deal and the competitor is just ”a fork”

But it could be devastating if that type of deal wasn’t in place

@jiraTicket
If it's an individual vs a company, he'd get buried under even modest corporate representation. They can continuously move the venue and file appeals on the civil judgement until he's out of money. It's a no win for him.