Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project

intuitiveexplanations.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 1001 posts

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

#461

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#462

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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…

", is clearly doing the exact same thing... how is that not at least "stealing the idea"??"

Vague general ideas like "a car" or "140 character limit" are not property, and so cannot be stolen.

Acting this way is superbly entitled.

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

#463

Post by mmastrac »

tyingq wrote: post #447
whimsicalism wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which is hilarious given that the CEO of repl.it is literally building something similar to a product that he worked on at codeacademy

This is the absolute best part of this. Re-read his snarky language now knowing this and it's just...funny.

It's very easy to justify doing something to benefit yourself while writing it off as justified, and getting massively offended when someone does the same thing to your perceived detriment.

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

#465

Post by odyslam »

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.

This tweet didn't age well. https://twitter.com/Conaw/status/1324100838894305281

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

#466

Post by pbecotte »

treesprite82 wrote: post #371
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 project is "no more similar to Replit than the 15 other (commercial!) ones you can find on Google by searching “run python online” or “online programming environment”." and uses none of Replit's internal design decisions, then I don't think it's fair to call it a clone. I am just taking the author at their word though. Could turn out that they copy-pasted large chunks of non-FOSS code from Replit or something.

The emails from the company make it clear that at least one party to the dispute believed that they did use Replit's internal design decisions. Commercial companies approaching the same problem certainly would offer similar feature sets. But an employee reading the source code and then starting a git repo that makes a working version of the product freely available is a pretty big deal. It doesn't have to be copy-pasted to be valuable intellectual property. (though, I do agree that THIS was unlikely to actually be valuable IP haha)

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

#467

Post by mindcrime »

Everybody knows their own situation best, and makes decisions based on their values, beliefs, judgments, etc. And it's hard to question somebody else when you don't know all the inner details. But man, oh man, is it hard to read that and not kinda wish the guy had responded with something like:

"Fuck You. Sue me if you want, you won't get a damn penny because I don't have it. And how are your VC's going to react to you wasting their money on a frivolous lawsuit. Come to think of it, I'll be reaching out to all of them to ask that very question..."

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

#468

Post by pbecotte »

burnished wrote: post #400
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 off…

Yeah, I'm all on board with trashing the company. Those emails were terrible.

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

#469

Post by amjadtwofaced »

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…

[flagged]

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

#470

Post by pbecotte »

brianberns wrote: post #265
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…

Unless I’m misunderstanding something, the company’s software is already open source ( https://github.com/replit ), so cloning it is perfectly reasonable. If there’s any dispute here, I think it would be over the copyright to the cloned code (if it really is a clone), but the article doesn’t mention anything about that, so I suspect it isn’t actually cloned at all.

Just because a company has SOME open source software, probably doesn't mean that all of their software is.
Post reply on HN