Information on keeping identity private / stealing code

[lewysryan]

Hello,

My name is lewys  and I am here today because I would like a answer to a couple of questions I have. A developer has currently left our team however we expect him to be stealing code. 

He has his Bitbucket account set to keep his identity private which means we can no longer view his repositories or him. His account wasn't like this before, only after his departure. We have had reports from good friends of ours and his that he has very similar looking software on his network which on-top of his sudden privacy concern, the lack of contact (changing his skype, email ect.) We expect him to be re-using our code but changed slightly (which he told our friend he has done).

We have a team on BitBucket which he was added to. All our repositories are kept private however he doesn't own any of them. He has worked on no projects on our repositories as proven by the commit log, he only imported them from a rival service, GitHub (We find your service so much better). 

My question would be how I would go about making sure he isn't copying our months of hard work? All this circumstantial evidence seriously worries us that he hasn't got repositories with our work on as we speak.Our close friends which have spoke to him have said he has copied our work and especially our project "NobleCore" which he had nothing to do with. Where do I go from here as obviously I can't check myself? Would I be able to issue a DMCA notice or have someone check his repositories as this is a serious concern? What do you guys suggest I do?

Cheers,

Lewys

[Seth]

I assume you are using Git.

Here's how Git works. When you "clone" a repository from a remote (such as bitbucket or github), you get a copy of the entire repository on your local machine. If your access to that remote is revoked - the local repository doesn't care. You've successfully prevented him from sabotaging your code, but there is nothing you can do technologically to prevent him from "stealing" code he previously had access to.

As far as legal recourse, you should consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction.