Over the last two years, I’ve built a complex Enterprise RAG system (Multi-Lane Consensus Architecture, layout-aware parsing, microservices). I open-sourced the core components (RAG_enterprise_core, smart-ingest-kit, DAUT, ingest-router even my Mail-assisten as a plugin for rag etc.) to give back to the community and build in public

Yesterday, I discovered that another founder/developer and his "autonomous AI persona account" literally linked my exact GitHub repositories on their public profile under " Featured Work".

They are using my 2 years of engineering to prove how "smart" their AI agent is, claiming my architecture as their own output to attract clients and investors. (After I confronted them and put a warning in my READMEs, they panicked and 404'd the repos, but I have all the screenshots).

I archived my repos in frustration and am seriously considering quitting open source entirely. It feels like I’m just acting as a free R&D department for copycat SaaS wrappers.

I have a few questions for founders and engineers here who have navigated this:

- How do you actually protect your IP when building in public? Does moving to AGPLv3 practically stop wrapper-startups from exploiting core architecture without attribution? - For those who transitioned from OS to a closed-source B2B/Enterprise SaaS model after getting cloned – what was your strategy?

Did I overreact by archiving everything? Part of me wants to launch the next iteration (PantheonRAG-CE) because the architecture is highly demanded, but the disrespect to the craft is incredibly demotivating.

Any advice on how to handle the plagiarism or how to license the next iteration would be highly appreciated.

I just wanted to solve the garbage in Problem and I really gave everything