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

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

#211

Post by acdha » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

megous wrote: post #93

devwastaken wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defense is a lot more expensive than offense in civil court. Complicated cases like these can be dragged for years and they'd have to pay for it. Intellectual property laws are very in the favor of whomever has the money to throw lawyers around.

Yes, but what would replit gain? Going after such a case would have given them nothing except for some expense. Dragging random people through court without any meaningful expected outcome sure doesn't seem like something VC's would like to fund. I'm not a VC though. Do they just rubber stamp whatever bullshit behavior from a CEO?

Once it becomes personal, don’t assume economic analysis will have any weight in the decision to continue suing.

VCs give money but they’re not going to micromanage the company unless something becomes a major distraction. Given how much the VC model involves finding things to monetize, I would not expect strong pushback against a claim that they have IP to protect (that’s an asset which the VCs co-own & intend to monetize) and if they have a lawyer on retainer it might not even be much of an expense to pursue early on.

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

#212

Post by xaceuu » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

I hope the CEO won't threat my Telegram bot projects. It's been on the Replit for a while, is there any other platforms that provide the same as Replit?

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

#213

Post by mitchill » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

johnwheeler wrote: post #113

Situation sounds like to me is: 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…

Agreed.

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.

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

#214

Post by sillysaurusx » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

cole-k wrote: post #192

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…

Well, if we want to supply character evidence, I know Radon. And I believe that not only were his intentions good, but also his actions. Although I would still like to hear Amjad’s side of the story.

I just... Amjad has been excellent, and I’ve never gotten the sense he would do something like this. It doesn’t even make sense for him to worry at all, let alone to send legal threats. Replit is at “early google/Microsoft vibes,” as pg put it. It would be hard for anything to kill replit, unless they do it themselves.

I saw this pop up while I was out driving to the gas station, but I was so shocked that I wanted to urge caution. Now that I’m back, I too will look carefully at all sides. Thank you for vouching for Radon — it helps to know that this isn’t just someone with a chip on their shoulder making up stories.

Admittedly, if I have to reach for “maybe it’s a lie,” it’s not looking great. But the fair thing to do is to wait and hear from amjad.

What kind of stuff have you done together? I haven’t worked directly with Amjad, but some years ago I almost joined, and we’ve since thrown around ideas for how to use ML to build some great tooling at replit. He strikes me as extremely reasonable, and I’ve seen him change his mind from talking with him. (It wasn’t just a technical plan that he changed his mind about; it was a tricky social situation thing.) I didn’t get the sense he would stomp on someone.

I agree it’s possible I was off the mark, and if so, I’ll readjust. But I believe in him. So I won’t let myself be dragged to a certain judgement without listening to the other side of the story first, no matter how bad it looks.

But it’s fair if other people don’t feel that way. It’s just, the inside situation often looks much, much different, y’know? It’s good to wait and see.

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

#215

Post by ChicagoBoy11 » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:10 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…

That's correct, and OP himself feared as much. But Amjad explicitly refused an offer to uncross those wires. As much as the benefit of the doubt should still be given and this may indeed just be a miscommunication issue, at that juncture he really has no one to blame but himself for this fallout.

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

#216

Post by blazespin » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:10 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.

Yeah, we are just getting one side.

That said, all the possible IP in something like this is in security, reliability, scalability and good UX.

Severely doubt the OP spent much time on that.

The CEO is probably just having trouble dealing with stress and is acting out. It happens.

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

#217

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

ericbarrett wrote: post #187

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.

[deleted]

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

#218

Post by Thaxll » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

daniel-thompson wrote: post #122

cole-k wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second-hand source here, but I’m pretty sure Riju postdates the author’s internship. IANAL but if he signed a non-compete maybe this could be a legal issue.

Replit is based in SF, and non-competes aren't enforceable in California.

I'm pretty sure you can't leave a compagny and create a similar project copy pasting the same design / idea that you knew while working in the previous compagny.

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

#219

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

charlesdaniels wrote: post #47

toomuchtodo wrote: post #6

Are there any open source competitors to Replit that are seeking patrons? I have been encouraged by the rapid fire Show HNs of open source first startups [1], and this space seems ripe for such open tooling. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...

Try It Online[0] seems to offer a very similar service - if you don't care about the collaboration aspect of it. It claims to be self-hostable[1]. glot.io[2] is another, which seems to fit more in the realm of "pastebin with runnable snippets". As I understand it, a big sell of repl.it is that they have some kind of collaborative editing support, which none of the alternatives I was able to find in a few minutes of d…

Thank you!

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

#220

Post by bravura » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

KingOfCoders wrote: post #95

Vote me down, but Ycombinator: "It's all about the founders blah blah blah" - if their process finds and funds these kind of people, the process is broken. https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/repl-it

Yes, but supporting remote by offering $0 - 0 salary and 0.00% - 0.00% equity seems legit and completely transparent: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/repl-it/jobs/aihA75TQr...