Double speaky "pity us, we're just the VC funded, expensive lawyer having, little guy" response post from the founder incoming.
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
#52Yeah, not sure about this one chief. I don't know the legal aspects here, but I think it makes sense to not create an open-source project that competes with your previous employer and then correspond with them letting them know you did it...
Wouldn’t this only hold if you signed a competition clause, and if so then they would have to compensate you for not being able to work on technology X for Y amount of years?
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#53If 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 think the CEO is absolutely nuts here.
With that said, I also think certain employees though have a very slippery mentality of this sort of vibe where they do things that might be sketchy or on the borderline not OK (but JUST on the line), and then rationalize as "but ... reason!". The tone of this whole article is very subtly reminiscent of that... the type of person that when given an inch will take 10 inches (not even a mile, not that severe), and always do it under the guise of many bullet points and being nice, like this article... but the undertones are there that they're really trying to push the boundary.
That's my unsolicited .02
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#54This is a good case study in how to not treat someone, especially a seemingly talented engineer. CEO’s hinting of money raised and legal threat is almost comical.
The CEO should have recognized that this is a guy who is interested in this space and should have made every effort to hire/acquihire him. He may have had to use some of that VC money he was going to pay the lawyers but that would have been the best.
If I were a VC in this company I would be very concerned by the immaturity of the CEO.
EDIT: one more point: Would ReplIt be now the Copycat if they add the support for languages that the OP had added but were missing from Replit?
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#55so they said "we're gonna talk to some lawyers" and your response is to write a lengthy public blog post without any legal counsel, in which you publish private correspondence along with the other person's contact info without their consent, and in which you essentially document all of the evidence against you -and- admit you understood your actions? huh. That's probably not how I would have responded.
Yes, poor repl.it who's explicitly threatening to use their big bankroll to squash a small developer doing something he is passionate about it. He should just shut up and accept the validity of their effort to silence him.
it feels like you're intentionally missing the point here. If repl.it is acting as if they believe they have legal leverage, why respond by giving them more leverage?
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#56Why did you take it down? And why did you apologize? I think the threat to sue was posturing, the same way that legal charges are always trumped up to get you to accept a plea. If you had let them see it through, and they intended to sue you, you could have churned up a horror-inducing PR nightmare of a shitstorm for them. If someone is really as petty to light cash on fire suing a young person with no assets over ba…
> Litigation is expensive, you could have qualified for a public defender while they burned company assets
> I say this as someone who isn't a stranger to the courts and judicial system.
This wouldn't be a criminal case, how are public defenders relevant?
For not being a stranger, you seem sort of unfamiliar with the potential downsides of being involved in legal action, the existence of damages/remedies, etc.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#57Assuming this is what happened.. why would you even worry about your intern doing a project. I don't know how long repl.it has existed (from my memory, a while) but are they that scared of something like this catching up to them and beating them in the marketplace? A product the author seemed to have no intention of releasing for commercial use anyways? Also isn't the entire point of an internship to learn from a com…
I interpreted the CEO's reactions less as scared and more as angry. The guy interned at their company, refused a bunch of offers, then released an open source project that at first glance mimics their own company.
It seemed more like an emotional reflex by the CEO than a calculating ploy to suppress competition. Still doesn't bode well though.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#58Did the author disclose the work on Riju as a prior invention before joining Repl.it? If so that puts him in the clear. I would also check your hiring contract to see what kind of clauses are in there about prior inventions. For larger companies, I don't think this company behavior would surprise anyone.
I think I can understand where Repl.it is coming from. All I know is this behavior (by Riju author) isn't something I would personally want to do. Join a company, leave, and open source something that is directly related to the company's business model, whether it undermines their profits or not. It's standard for companies (other than Apple) to say "work on whatever tech you want, but if it competes with us, we should evaluate it that's OK."
I would at least have gotten their buy-in on the project or idea first. Especially given this commit message:
> repl.it superiority!!
I also wouldn't use intentions or the fact that it currently has less traffic than Repl.it as example of why this is harmless. I would approach this with an empathetic view to how a company would see an engineer leaving and then open sourcing something directly related to the company, based on what they learned while working at the company.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#59Seems odd but keep in mind we've only heard one side and the truth always sounds obvious when only one side is heard.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#60Yeah, not sure about this one chief. I don't know the legal aspects here, but I think it makes sense to not create an open-source project that competes with your previous employer and then correspond with them letting them know you did it...
IANAL, but as someone who has used both tio.run and repl.it, I have difficulty seeing what sort of “competition” this constitutes (Riju, in my eyes, being very very similar to tio).
Otherwise I would expect tio to have received some threatening emails as well (maybe they have?).