Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by stale2002 » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

gavinray wrote: post #2

Why did you take it down? And why did you apologize? I think the threat to sue was posturing, the same way that legal charges are always trumped up to get you to accept a plea. If you had let them see it through, and they intended to sue you, you could have churned up a horror-inducing PR nightmare of a shitstorm for them. If someone is really as petty to light cash on fire suing a young person with no assets over ba…

> Why did you take it down? And why did you apologize?

Probably because he actually did do something that, if not explicitly wrong/illegal, then at the very least on the borderline of being so.

And he has very little to gain by fighting this. He got his clicks and likes already. What would he need to website for?

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

#182

Post by princevegeta89 » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

OP seems to be pretty talented here. They were able to build a clone in no time.

If Replit CEO had any brains he should have thought about hiring OP as an exceptional engineer and work with them.

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

#183

Post by jakelazaroff » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

archibaldJ wrote: post #157

whymauri wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They offered to hire him before insinuating he was a bad/demanding intern, as well. This is standard manipulative behavior and has little benefit to anyone besides attempting to make the intern feel bad. This isn't the first time I've seen a founder resort to this exact type of behavior before threatening legal action.

I would play devil's advocate here and say that the situation is probably muddier than it is presented in the blog. Also there appers to be a level of trust here (at least the Replit CEO trusted that OP will not make this go viral on HN and spiral into a PR nightmare I suppose, which though is the most entertaining path it can take) Not sure how talented OP is. This can as well be a case study of who not to hire.

> Also there appers to be a level of trust here (at least the Replit CEO trusted that OP will not make this go viral on HN and spiral into a PR nightmare I suppose, which though is the most entertaining path it can take)

I don’t get what you’re saying here. It’s not a breach of trust to speak publicly about someone threatening legal action against you.

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

#184

Post by adsharma » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

The next cool thing is not "run python and 30 other languages online". It'll be write python, translate to other languages and then run them online.

We're at 7. https://github.com/adsharma/py2many/

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

#185

Post by wdb » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #78

Guys, I don’t know what this is about yet, but I know amjad (ceo). And I know that whatever is going on here, his intentions were pure. He’s proven himself to me that he’s pretty much the opposite of a sleezy corporate ceo who crushes intern side projects while twirling his mustache. I just wanted to encourage everybody to chill on it for a moment and wait to see what’s up, because my spidey senses are screaming “mis…

Directly threaten a person with a lawsuit without any remediation is just wrong.

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

#186

Post by jonny_eh » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

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…

> Lawyers do not like to lose cases, so will not push a losing agenda

They will if they get paid.

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

#187

Post by ericbarrett » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

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…

I'm not afraid of lawyers, but I've been sued (a real estate matter) and I am definitely afraid of the U.S. civil law process.

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

#188

Post by oauea » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

Wow, absolutely pathetic. My company was evaluating this for pair programming and testing new hires, but just binned that idea. If anyone from replit is reading this: This is costing you business. Jetbrains Code With Me looks quite nice.

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

#189

Post by forgotpwd16 » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

So an intern goes to make an identical project to the one he worked in and present it as purely independent project? It is a bit strange, and there've been issues with other projects being copied that way before, but jumping directly to legal threatening is too much.

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

#190

Post by detaro » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

Yoofie wrote: post #136

Beside the whole legal threat drama, is anyone else surprised that replit got $20 million in VC funding for what essentially is a script that can be made by an intern in a day? And the idea has been around forever and is not even unique. Is it really that easy to get VC funding for these types of things? Like Jesus, if all it takes is some ideas and moving to SF to secure funding like this, then I have a whole bunch…

It's not something you do in "essentially a day" if you want it be secure and reliable. (E.g. the example toy project they link literally just runs python directly on the server: https://github.com/raxod502/python-in-a-box/blob/master/serv... - you'll need to stop doing that very quickly if public). The parts of their stack that repl.it has put on their own Github looks loads more valuable (and I assume are also not covering some of those core problems)

Which makes the reaction weird.