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Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project

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Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project

#381

Post by jahewson »

dimgl wrote: post #61
finger wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t this only hold if you signed a competition clause, and if so then they would have to compensate you for not being able to work on technology X for Y amount of years?

Yeah this is what I'm unsure of as it steps into the legal side of things. In general though, doesn't it make sense to not create a free competitor right after leaving your employer? They may have a case regarding stealing trade secrets given that they did give you access to their codebase and daily ops.

There’s no reasonable expectation of there being trade secrets in the repl.it source code. Trade secrets are narrowly defined and there’s mountains of case law to shed light on the specifics. If they stole a super-secret algorithm not published anywhere else or stole a list of paying customers, now that would be a problem. But any handwavy non-specific speculation is so wild as to be FUD.

Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project

#382

Post by dogman144 »

stevebmark wrote: post #58

Did the author disclose the work on Riju as a prior invention before joining Repl.it? If so that puts him in the clear. I would also check your hiring contract to see what kind of clauses are in there about prior inventions. For larger companies, I don't think this company behavior would surprise anyone. I think I can understand where Repl.it is coming from. All I know is this behavior (by Riju author) isn't somethin…

Yeah in general this strikes me as a learning lesson. If you're at all career-wise (and/or have signed a contract recently), this area is usually anywhere from an ethically gray area, to a contractural third rail.

A CEO flexing on an early-career SWE is the height of nonsense, but this sounds like an early-career mistake to make on the engineer's end.

For the SWE it's a project, for the CEO it's existential. Of course this could go south.

Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project

#384

Post by tiltrus »

codingdave wrote: post #111

> Naturally, I took down my project right away... So a CEO bullied you. He threatened to have lawyers look at something, accused you of behaving poorly, and accused you of being difficult. He is being manipulative. He is trying to guilt / scare you into stopping. And it worked. For all readers... do not be afraid of lawyers. Especially if nobody has even talked to them yet. Lawyers do not like to lose cases, so will…

amasad is a regular HN'er who's very active in all posts related to repl.it.

Very immature behavior on Amjad's part. I'm considering pulling our corporations subscription and moving to Stackblitz now....

Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project

#385

Post by daenz »

mac-chaffee wrote: post #143

All these battles over IP where there's an enormous power imbalance strike me as problems of ego. In college, I made a website and I thought another student "stole" the idea. I considered my legal options, but I'm glad I stopped there, even if I did have a case. The other student was never a serious threat to my idea and in fact lost interest in the idea next year. So the only harm I suffered was to my ego that thoug…

>All these battles over IP where there's an enormous power imbalance strike me as problems of ego.

Bingo, especially the whole "we now have the resources to crush you" attitude. Someone please make sure these jokers never get money and power again.

Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project

#386

Post by gabeio »

jwilber wrote: post #166

If the CEO didn’t throw a tantrum over the exact things his company claims to support (OSS, creativity, etc.), nobody would know about the intern’s weekend project. But he did, and now we’ll see something of a Streisand effect [0]. To be fair, it is kind of suspect to intern for a company and, at the end of that internship, turn around and create effectively the same thing. And OP’s dismissive tone and propensity to…

I had nearly the same feeling while reading this and specifically finally getting to the part where the author mentions they were an intern. Being an intern at the company is kinda important to this story, had they not been an intern at the company I think this would have been a vastly different conversation.

I honestly think both are in the wrong here, the CEO should have been a bit more relaxed about the handling of this. As well the intern really should have tried to stay away from projects which directly relate to past company business models.

I also question if this article could be considered defamatory.

Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project

#387

Post by 29athrowaway »

yellow_lead wrote: post #3

A fancy funded company like Replit getting scared by an intern's weekend project is entertaining. If your moat is so low it can be replicated in a few days, I think this open source project is the least of their worries.

Sounds like the plot of the movie Antitrust.

Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project

#388

Post by merb »

robertkrahn01 wrote: post #110

I've worked for ten years on the Lively Kernel project [1,2,3], originally created by Dan Ingalls at Sun Microsystems. Running JavaScript, Smalltalk, R, Clojure, Haskell, Python, C++ and a few other languages in it. When I first saw replit, I thought, wow someone copied 1/4 of Lively. Do they really think they had an original idea? [1] https://lively-kernel.org [2] https://lively-next.org [3] https://cloxp.github.io/…

well there are tons of online repl's or online ide's that came way before replit. cloud9/eclipse che and than there is this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_source_co... and this: https://joel.franusic.com/online-reps-and-repls

Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project

#389

Post by tzs »

robertkrahn01 wrote: post #110

I've worked for ten years on the Lively Kernel project [1,2,3], originally created by Dan Ingalls at Sun Microsystems. Running JavaScript, Smalltalk, R, Clojure, Haskell, Python, C++ and a few other languages in it. When I first saw replit, I thought, wow someone copied 1/4 of Lively. Do they really think they had an original idea? [1] https://lively-kernel.org [2] https://lively-next.org [3] https://cloxp.github.io/…

Did any of the Replit people work on Lively Kernel? I think what has the Replit guy upset is not that some random person did something similar, but rather that someone who worked at Replit did something similar.

As far as Lively Kernel goes, is there a list of languages it supports? All I got from your links is that it is a JavaScript-based web development environment, seems to have a lot of Smalltalk related stuff, and that it includes something called lively.ide, which provides "Tool support for programming and debugging JavaScript, HTML, CSS, shell" and "Other languages can be plucked in as needed (see cloxp and LivelyR)."

Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project

#390

Post by [deleted] »

thecupisblue wrote: post #98

Haven't used replit, our product is still in stealth and we're looking for funding, but tbh I'd love to have you work (part-time remote or whatever) for us. Im quite discombobulated on why they are doing this instead of offering you a job. I say good job Radon and if you ever want a job doing open things for fun where a company wont't sue you afterwards, ping. This behaviourk... it is not just unethical from their si…

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