I'm very sad to hear that you were threatened with a lawsuit — it's an impressive project. Unclear what jurisdiction you're in (probably the US), but in the UK they would have a hard time arguing in court that your project damaged them.
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
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had nearly the same feeling while reading this and specifically finally getting to the part where the author mentions they were an intern. Being an intern at the company is kinda important to this story, had they not been an intern at the company I think this would have been a vastly different conversation. I honestly think both are in the wrong here, the CEO should have been a bit more relaxed about the handling o…
Non-competes are unethical and also illegal in California where replit is based. Edit: They aren't technically "illegal" in CA, just unenforceable.
Based on what I am reading, unless I am misunderstanding, which considering how our laws are written I'm surprised anyone is capable of understanding them entirely.
https://www.callahan-law.com/are-non-competes-enforceable-in... (where I am reading up about this from)
It seems California outlawed non-competes in the sense that if I am a programmer, and I sign a contract which states that I must not be a programmer for the next 5 years after working for X, that is instantly voided.
But this is different, as an intern I copied in essence the core business model (not directly copying the code) and open sourced it, seems like a conflict of interest. Which in this case a non-compete might be able to be held as it's mostly saying I'm a programmer for a company which does X, I can't move to a competitor, or become a competitor (which is somewhat what the intern did).
As someone who is definitely not a lawyer or judge I have no idea where the laws/courts or otherwise stand on this matter in actuality.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#453Unpopular opinion, IAAL and frankly Replit has a case that will pass the "motion to dismiss" stage when litigation starts getting expensive b/c of discovery. The OP worked for Replit and therefore had access to private source code or "trade secrets" before creating his project. It'd take expert testimony for the OP to prove in court that his OSS project was not influenced in any way by Replit's closed-source code, wh…
lol you don’t know what you’re talking about in the least
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
It goes both ways. Imagine Replit’s attorney going after OP. If OP didn’t take down the site, then suing them is going to be a huge expense & waste of time. Is Replit really gonna pay some corporate attorney $600-ish per hour to harass someone? You don’t even need a lawyer to show up in court and say “I’m a broke ass new grad, and these guys are trying to take down my website. I don’t even know why, but I’m dragging…
The attorney will never say this. They will bill hours after hours because it is in their best interest.
The attorney is bound to act in their client's best interest. A bad lawyer might do that, but a good lawyer will indeed tell their client when something isn't worth the cost, despite their own financial interest.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
Counterpoint: be afraid of lawyers. They may not be able to win s judgment against you, but they can easily bankrupt you. Remember the case where a man criticized Proctorio and was hit with a SLAPP lawsuit aimed to silence him. He ended up spending 100k on legal costs and the case is only beginning. He would have been bankrupt despite being 100% legally in the right. Fortunately for him, EFF decided to support him af…
It goes both ways. Imagine Replit’s attorney going after OP. If OP didn’t take down the site, then suing them is going to be a huge expense & waste of time. Is Replit really gonna pay some corporate attorney $600-ish per hour to harass someone? You don’t even need a lawyer to show up in court and say “I’m a broke ass new grad, and these guys are trying to take down my website. I don’t even know why, but I’m dragging…
I think you have way too much faith that a legal proceeding will reveal the "truth" about your intentions and actions. It's about competing narratives and interpretations of "facts".
If it goes to a legal proceeding, it is about convincing a stranger and lay-person (i.e. Judge, or perhaps even worse a group of jurors), that you didn't violate the law. You have to do this while the other side is doing their very best to convince the same stranger that you are a devious thief who did irreparable harm to their company and cost them millions in damages (or some other absurdly large number). They will paint everything you did and say as part of your plan to steal from and damage their company. They will have highly qualified experts submit very convincing reports, and testify, that what you did was trade secrete theft, and caused immense damage. Your only defense will be to push your own narrative that can counter all of this, sufficiently to get you off the hook. You'll need at least a lawyer, perhaps experts of your own, and all the cost that this entails. This will be a big deal to your life, but will be a business expense (i.e. before taxes) for the company suing you.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#456I...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…
Why? Assuming that there isn't a non-compete signed by the former employee, the (former) employee has the right to use all their skills and knowledge to do whatever they want on the free market.
This wouldn't be an issue of non-compete, but of intellectual property - and I can't imagine there was no intellectual property agreement signed. I've never had a job that didn't have one...
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#457No idea is original and belongs to anyone. Even airplane was possibly derived by looking at birds flying. If you hire an intern and they want to use the understanding to open another company, it is the best thing that can happen to your business. Customers would not start coding online unless they see 20 options to do so.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did any of the Replit people work on Lively Kernel? I think what has the Replit guy upset is not that some random person did something similar, but rather that someone who worked at Replit did something similar. As far as Lively Kernel goes, is there a list of languages it supports? All I got from your links is that it is a JavaScript-based web development environment, seems to have a lot of Smalltalk related stuff,…
> Did any of the Replit people work on Lively Kernel? No, and I wasn't suggesting that. Though Lively was a project at YC Research in 2016/2017 and replit is a YC 18 company I think. So they might have heard about it but I do not remember giving any demos to folks involved with it. And even if, we actually invited folks to copy the ideas. The Lively project was not a product but trying to carry forward a set of ideas…
Hey Robert, it would be great to get in touch. I'm part of a group that has built an authorship system inspired by HyperCard/Smalltalk [1] and we are using OhmJS to implement our language and interpreter.
We are inching closer towards a more "public" release, and hope to be there in the next few weeks
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#459[deleted]
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#460anyone who has ever interviewed with Amjad knows hes two-faced. He had a posting for a marketing position open forever and would have you work about 3 weeks for the interview. He would ask for marketing campaigns and how to implementing them. thinking that he was testing your skill set but actually just stealing ideas. I use to use Repl.it but forget. I really hope this company burns. He lacks the understanding of wh…
I second this. A lot of people who interfaced with him at Facebook has a lot to say about him being two faced and dishonest.
Dude is the epitome of virtue signalling to any side that will give him money.
YC has gone to shits that they couldn’t identify it.