Interesting, I've wondered why you've taken it down! Your project was such a great help dealing with monaco-language-server, and I was really sad when it just vanished off of Github one day.
Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
301–310 of 1001 posts
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#302Because of Amjad Masad's words and actions, I won't be using Repl.it or anything Masad touches at all. I'll recommend the same to friends and colleagues, as well.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#303A 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.
It's kinda funny how their CEO writes on Twitter all the time that they are the best company in the world, with the best product, do most innovations in tech etc and 10 minutes later he is threatened by a small open-source project that wasn't even created to compete.
I unfollowed him after he tweeted that Repl.it is the most innovative company in the world.
Yeah, not SpaceX or Neuralink or Pfizer. A company that runs docker images is the most innovative company.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#304Replit’s CEO: “I owe my entire career to open-source”
Copy, paste, threaten with lawsuit?
=> new product ready to launch
All big three cloud providers monetize other people's open source projects by renting out hosted versions. Apparently, that's OK and highly profitable. So why look down on a startup CEO attempting to replicate the cloud success story?
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I can understand now why you would doubt the blog post. Radon and I are friends from college, and in my approximately five years of knowing him I have no reason to believe him ever capable of faking a blog post so he can get back at his former employer. He certainly fights for what he believes in, though.
I suppose we can only wait to hear what Amjad has to say.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's kinda funny how their CEO writes on Twitter all the time that they are the best company in the world, with the best product, do most innovations in tech etc and 10 minutes later he is threatened by a small open-source project that wasn't even created to compete.
Yeah - I don't really like piling on, but Replit and Roam both give off massive alarms for me regarding the founders. Both seem to think they're Xerox PARC - or the most ambitious software companies on earth, both products seem pretty underwhelming. Just seems wildly disproportionate to what they're doing. At least Steve Jobs was actually building stuff that was revolutionary. Elon Musk is building reusable rockets a…
Well, these are things that most tech people know, we just don't discuss them because we're polite.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#307If I’m reading those emails correctly, Amjad the CEO directly emailed you occasionally. It is pretty stunning that as the CEO of the company, he would stoop to what I interpret as pretty unprofessional communication and petty threats. I also am failing to connect the dots about why Replit would even feel threatened - if you were as helpful of an intern as described, you’d think they would recognize that you had good…
I mean, this was a marketing opportunity. They could've asked nicely if he'd be willing to link to repl.it for anyone who wants something more solid and scalable. It sounds from the early e-mails as if OP started out very positively predisposed towards them. Instead they've now broadcast to their potential customer base that they're litigious and petty.
> litigious and petty
The unfortunate truth is that this doesn't matter. Oracle, as one recent example, is still wildly successful - even in the open source space.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#308I could understand an over eager lawyer but this is the CEO of a company with $20 million in funding personally threatening to sic the lawyers on a one man open source project. This is evidence that: 1) he doesn’t have anything better to do, bad news for Replit, 2) he’s afraid of this little project, also bad news for Replit.
That was my first thought.
How 'empty' is Replit as a company if some rando intern is a threat ... and/or how poor is the CEO at deciding how to spend his time if this is how they choose to do it?
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#309Vote 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...
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Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#310Earlier 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.
I'm pretty skeptical. I think a rational actor wouldn't have made legal threats. Even if OP's project does somehow use some secret insight from replit, it's certainly not a threat to replit's business in any way. Legal action would be a waste of time, money, and PR.
Which means that the legal threats levelled against OP are presumably coming from a place of emotion and personal resentment, and I'm very much not prepared to extend the benefit of the doubt to replit under those circumstances.