From the article:
> I’m not a business person. I’m just an open-source dev who likes to build weird things for fun. (If you doubt my track record of building things that don’t make money, just check out the list on my website, and note the conspicuous absence of anything that’s ever made a cent of revenue.)
This doesn't make your interpretation impossible, but it's certainly very unlikely.
Amjad... is that you?
It's one thing to do this to learn more about software development, it's another to give it a name and a website.
They're really leaning into the "I'm just an intern without commercial intents" narrative, but regardless of their intent, it's still incredibly unethical to create something similar your previous employer's IP and market it independently.
Can you explain why you think it is unethical? Provided no noncompete clauses or other previous agreements were violated.
CEO keeps in touch with beast mode 10x'er intern who both impressed him and needed to be kept at arms length.
Beast mode intern flirts with the idea of launching a competing startup under the guise of innocent open source project and transparency with a passing mention of project in email.
CEO realizes he needs to shut intern down otherwise any communication that looks supportive might be used against him later on.
Intern realizes the jig is up. Writes apology to CEO out of fear and discomfort.
CEO responds that he doesn't want anything further to do with him.
Beast mode intern exercises final option to write a blog post attempting to gain community support.
Something or other like that...