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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

#391

Post by teraflop »

samatman wrote: post #313
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…

This doesn't look to me like one of those cases where new information is going to come to light. Nor do I want to commit the fundamental attribution error, like 80% of this thread. Even though there are a few other people offering personal experiences of Amjad rubbing them the wrong way. That tends to happen in a thread of this character. Here's my best guess: your friend had a bad day and fucked up. Then he doubled…

> I think a simple apology and some self reflection would go a long way here.

The CEO is continuing to double down today, more than 2 months after the original conversation, so I'm not sure that's likely: https://twitter.com/amasad/status/1401957368510906369

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

#392

Post by autarch »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #328
autarch wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see how this is an argument. You're not allowed to copy their design even if it is public. That's not true. This depends entirely on the license of the relevant (repl.it) GitHub projects that the author is referencing. I don't know of any open source license that allows you to copy & modify code but somehow forbids you from reusing intangible design elements. This case is a little confusing, since it sounds…

> again, assuming a FOSS license replit is not open source though. Only some parts of it are. You can infringe copyright without copy-pasting code. If I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, burn my only copy of the book, then write and publish Jerry Schmotter and the Alchemist's Gem, a novel about a teenage boy with a star-shaped scar, etc., I'm probably infringing copyright even if I didn't word-for-word c…

I understand all that. The author claimed that all of the relevant design elements were part of repl.it's open source projects on GitHub.

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

#394

Post by gonehome »

boothrowaway wrote: post #312
gonehome wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Word on the street is that the Roam founder Conan is also getting pushed out for dehumanizing women and abusing meth, and being a general jackass. Silicon Valley has the best culture.

I don't know the truth around that either way, but I think Roam is based in Utah at some ranch (even if they're funded by a16z). I wouldn't generalize his behavior to the rest of silicon valley culture.

I think his brother was also the QAnon shaman horn guy (at least he said as much on Twitter - maybe it was a joke?).

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

#396

Post by robertkrahn01 »

seg_lol wrote: post #360
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/…

There still exists a fork of the Riju project on github which I have cloned locally. I would be more interested in running all of these languages in wasm and the execution state can be live migrated between the server and the client, that would be something that could surpass other online repls. https://qvault.io/python/running-python-in-the-browser-with-... Repl.it has no standing to code written by Radon.

Yeah wasm is definitely getting interesting as a platform for these. As long as you can build/compile a language VM (such as the Python VM) or a language compiler itself in wasm there shouldn't be much stopping you.

Thinks like that have been done even with plain JS and the results are very cool, see e.g. SqueakJS, a Squeak/Smalltalk VM implemented directly in JS.

[1] https://squeak.js.org/

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

#397

Post by kyawzazaw »

frakkingcylons wrote: post #298
pbecotte wrote: post #226

I...am on the side of the company here? wierd... An employee of a company left, and then made an open source clone of the company's software. The fact that the software was easy to clone or that others had done it previously doesn't seem really relevant. Several times I have left a company, and I could replicate a good percentage of it in a couple days too, not because it was easy, but because the months/years of exp…

If the intern was pursuing this project as a business, then I could sympathize with legal threats. But this is clearly a passion project. Why make such a big fuss over a side project?

And it's not even a pioneering idea from Replit

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

#398

Post by spacefiish »

codegeek wrote: post #319

Am I missing something ? You interned at a small company and then you built a very similar open source tool which is close to the core product they offer ? Whether the CEO is an asshole or not, I can't think of not agreeing with them here. Your "intentions" don't matter. If your work is very similar to your previous employer's , they have the right to ask you to take it down or come after you.

Yes, you are missing something. As stated numerous times in the article:

> Replit’s core value proposition isn’t letting you run code online (you can do this in dozens of places for free), it’s the features they offer on top of running code. Riju categorically lacked all of these features, including: having a user account, saving your work, sharing your work, publishing webapps, persistent workspaces, discussion forums, integration with GitHub, etc. etc.

> Replit makes a webapp you can use to run code online in different programming languages. This is nothing new (just Google “run python online” for proof), so Replit’s value proposition is extra features like sharing your work, installing third-party packages, and hosting webapps.

The core value proposition of Riju (toy playground for hundres of esoteric languages) != the core value proposition of Replit (feature-rich online IDE environment with lots of integrations and additional support). The only thing they have in common is that you can run code online, and that's not an even close to an original idea by Replit in any way. The CEO making a claim that this project is "copying" Replit has no actual basis given that there are literally dozens of other "copies" out there that are closer to Replit than Riju ever is/was.

I also have no idea how you can argue Riju is "very similar" to Replit, given how generic the technical common ground between them is. I also have no idea how you can argue it's a "tool" and not a toy, the author even explicitly said there was no practical purpose and served as an esoteric quarantine hobby project:

> You might ask: Why did I spend so much time adding obscure programming languages to a webapp nobody was going to use? Well, let me put it this way: Is it the weirdest 2020 hobby you’ve seen? ... Riju is entirely non-commercial. Unlike Replit, I didn’t seek funding from any source—advertising, donations, fundraising, subscriptions, whatever. I have no interest in running a business, and never really wanted Riju to become too popular, since I was the one paying the server bill.

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

#399

Post by uncomputation »

spoonjim wrote: post #28

I 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.

I’m also gonna add that, if I invested in a company and the CEO used any fraction of that funding to crush a non-competitor with legal might, I would seriously regret my investment. It seems to me this guy doesn’t understand his own value prop more than a former intern.

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

#400

Post by burnished »

pbecotte wrote: post #226

I...am on the side of the company here? wierd... An employee of a company left, and then made an open source clone of the company's software. The fact that the software was easy to clone or that others had done it previously doesn't seem really relevant. Several times I have left a company, and I could replicate a good percentage of it in a couple days too, not because it was easy, but because the months/years of exp…

I hear you, but I'm curious about why the response of legal threats weighs less heavily on your heart than anything else here? That seems like a big deal and probably the biggest deal here.

I mean, can you imagine a world where the email was "Hey that is great work, but I'm worried this is stepping on our toes a little. Can you take that project down?".

And then honestly the more I think about it the "why dont we offer you a job!" -> "most difficult intern we had" (note: quotes not intended to imply literal quote here) is really troubling.

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