Comment by michaelmrose

I don't think anyone who doesn't work for you has any obligation whatsoever to consider your image. As a CEO and public face of a company you should go ahead and assume that anyone you threaten or badmouth will go ahead and talk about it online, on the news, or with a bullhorn at the local mall.

He willingly traded some percentage chance at a competitor using an open source project to steal some percentage of his business for this PR nightmare. Personally I think this effort shows the bar for such a project is pretty low so I don't think shutting it down was a good trade off. I think it shows immaturity, bad will, bad faith and honestly its more of a case study in whom not to work for. Most people they would want to hire are liable to have multiple options. They can ill afford to be an undesirable choice.