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

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

#251

Post by armchairhacker » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:20 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…

Many attorneys offer free consultations, so OP (or anyone in a similar situation) should've contacted an attorney and asked them what to do. The attorney would know very well if he was in actual danger or the CEO was just bluffing.

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

#252

Post by Pick-A-Hill2019 » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:20 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.

In regards to your comment about the situation being a bit muddier than presented: I would suggest that you take a look through the unabridged version as linked in the post ( https://web.archive.org/web/20210530184721/https://imgur.com... )

Rather than downvoting your comment I opted to reply to it since it may provide a bit more information for you to base your judgement on about "things being muddier".

As for your last comment about their abilities - forgive me but that sounds incredibly unfair and unwarranted and verges on being a personal attack.

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

#253

Post by Gualdrapo » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

mitchill wrote: post #213

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.

Then why would OP tell them about that? Sounds to me like the latest thing you'd do

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

#254

Post by aniforprez » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

brabel wrote: post #203

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.

Agreed... but the intern is obviously incredibly naive in thinking that repl.it would be happy to see one of their ex-interns working on a project that does pretty much the same kind of thing they're doing... whether or not this is a threat to them right now. There's a tiny, but non-zero chance, that this project could become successful and who knows, take marketshare from repl.it... and while everyone is pretending…

I'm sorry but this is a lot of words to say "be subservient to your old boss". There's nothing wrong in what this dude did. He made an open source experiment and for that he was threatened practically at gun point. The contents of the emails he received are highly unprofessional and childishly antagonistic

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

#255

Post by hitekker » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:20 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.

> at least the Replit CEO trusted that OP will not make this go viral on HN and spiral into a PR nightmare I suppose,

From reading the emails, it looks like the Replit CEO "trusted" that the OP was cowed into submission.

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

#256

Post by sam0x17 » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

I'm an advisor for a large coding Bootcamp, and I was about to recommend they use Replit across the board for all of their students. I will now be recommending that people stay as far away from this company as possible. This kind of behavior is unethical and intolerable, and worse, suggestive of deeper issues with Replit's governance, decision making, etc.

In the very least their poor decision making will now cost them a massive deal, so now there is a positive spin :)

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

#257

Post by jll29 » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

FiloSottile wrote: post #125

orliesaurus wrote: post #8

That's really shitty. I wonder what the founders of Replit have to say about this? They're active on HN so I hope they can address this publicly... EDIT: I mean the screenshots are irrefutable evidence of how bad this has escalated - it started as a normal convo and went downwards like the CEO was out to get some blood for no reason ... now I guess you're gonna get a lawyer threat letter to take down the whole blogpo…

> now I guess you're gonna get a lawyer threat letter to take down the whole blogpost because you've revealed private conversations without both parties' consent? Absent any NDA or other contract, there is nothing requiring the other party’s consent to publish correspondence in the US.

+1

Finally someone raising the valid point about "it all depends on the legal paperwork signed."

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

#258

Post by devenvdev » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

dimgl wrote: post #106

stopachka wrote: post #82

This sounds to me like naivete. Even if ideas were all publicly available on blog posts, there are existing competitors, and your project is open source, creating a copy of what you worked on as an intern is certainly in poor taste.

I made a similar comment below. I'm surprised at the anger towards repl.it on this thread.

The anger is not directed at replit but at its CEO. The company's negative reaction is understandable, lawyering up in response to some freshly graduated intern that obviously had not intended any harm - not cool. They could talk much softer and the result would be the same. That CEO dude gives an asshole vibe - people react :shrug:

edit: CTO -> CEO

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

#259

Post by MattGaiser » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:22 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 don't need to push it very far to cause a lot of harm to an individual and relatively bury them in costs.

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

#260

Post by jascii » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:22 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…

In the context of the article I took that as a gesture of goodwill while trying to talk out the misunderstanding. They had a relationship before this happened and it sounded like he wanted to maintain that relationship.

In the end, this was a hobby project for the author, and I can understand he might not want to deal with the stress involved with possible legislation. The bully is the aggressor here and lets try not to blame the victim.