I might be reading it wrong, but it sounds like you and some others here are either more closely connected to the folks involved or at least have more context. I don't want to imply that I know better what the author or anyone at Ruby Central _actually_ believes or is doing, I'm just commenting on the article at face value. Whether the article is true, deceptive, or in between, I think there is still an interesting general lesson about organizations in it.

> You are correct that they did not make any claims, but the article did insinuate illegal behavior on the part of André and Samuel by selectively juxtaposing facts to imply wrongdoing without ever directly stating or saying that their behavior was illegal.

I think we just took away something very different from the article. I didn't read it that way, I read it more as "these two have already decided to move on to work on this without Ruby Central so it's pragmatic to cut off their access". We might just need to agree to disagree on what the article implies; perhaps we are just reading it with different boundary conditions.

Where we might agree is that repeatedly bringing up the selling user data proposal doesn't add anything to the story except to prejudice the reader against Andre. If it's to show that there was still some communication between Andre and others at Ruby Central, I would have kept it at that. Every time it got mentioned I winced.

> California is actually quite clear on this!

My understanding is quite different. There is a duty of loyalty an employee owes their employer and directly competing with your employer is clearly a breach. There is recent enough case law on this (at least covering terminating an employee for cause as a result). I don't have access to the materials from a previous employer that explained some of this but I did quickly find [1] which roughly agrees with my recollection (though I would not be willing to vouch for this particular site), namely "that Section 16600 has consistently been interpreted as invalidating any employment agreement that unreasonably interferes with an employee’s ability to compete with an employer _after_ his or her employment ends".

I'm not a lawyer (I assume you aren't either but at the very least you aren't _my_ lawyer) so I think it's not worth debating this further, we seem pretty firm in our beliefs on this one.

[1] https://www.aalrr.com/Business-Law-Journal/californias-polic...

EDIT: I want to acknowledge that one of the individuals here was a contractor and not an employee. I have no idea how that factors into moonlighting restrictions. I imagine it would be more limited and lean more on what that individual's exact role is at the company? I think my point still stands that my understanding is that the general situation for the average software engineer is more nuanced.