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.
I wouldn't underestimate the potential of that project. I know of other cases where well funded CEOs have tried bullying away someone who recently worked for them from starting a company in a related space. Glad that they weren't able to shut it down, and the new founder has raised a nice round. I'd love to see Radon succeed with his project. IANAL but I don't think you can patent "path depencence". It is sunk cost
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
#532Earlier 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…
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…
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#5331. I am not lawyer but:
Is threatening someone with legal action illegal? Yes, if the intent is to resolve a good-faith dispute without litigation. But the threat of legal action without the intention of taking it may constitute extortion. Note that the person making the settlement request does not need to be right that the claim is winnable. But it must be made in good faith.Feb 24, 2020
OP needs to spend some coffee money and ask questions of a local attorney.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gosh, I wish I received 20 million in funding for that idea that needed three days to be technically replicated by an intern. My wish: Replit should sue intern, intern should get free attorney from EFF, case should be dismissed as "WTF" in court. Future CEOs will know that "an intern would need three days to technically replicate" is not a differentiator. Also, hope is not a strategy. VCs would learn that hearing BS…
How long would it take an intern to replicate Twitter? Is Twitter worth millions? I think so. I think it's really easy for tech teams to do things in a sub-optimal way and then get all caught up in fixing problems of their own making and start to think they're doing really great technical work and that it is a competitive advantage for the company. More companies need to face the fact that their software can be easil…
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#535Earlier 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…
This is dangerous advice if the lawyer fees get paid by the loser of the suit like they do in some cases. ianal but i'd look into that before taking this tactic.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#536Earlier 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…
It's easy to stand on the sidelines and criticize this person for not being a martyr to the cause of our terrible legal system - but, while such a lawsuit would never throw you out of your home, it could very quickly drain your personal savings which, if you have a family that's reliant on that savings for future education, could be devastating.
It is 100% reasonable and a good idea to reach out to the EFF if you're being cyber-bullied by a corp with an axe to grind, but standing on your own in this sort of a scenario is certainly going to inflict a fair bit of pain on the aggressor - but it's likely going to inflict a whole lot more pain on you. Lawsuits like this can be tied up in appeals essentially until we die of heat death given our legal system unless you get extremely likely.
Additionally I feel like you're making the assumption that the work a lawyer does is essentially busy work - discovery is an insanely expensive process to comply with and messing something up during discovery and accidentally deleting a key piece of evidence won't get you a "Well, you're just a rando - we'll let it slide" from the judge.
Lastly - if the trial actually did end up going to court, it's extremely likely you're going to lose without the assistance of a legal professional, US law is insanely complicated and I can almost guarantee that your current employer is breaking some law on a technicality currently, I have no idea what it is - but without legal council neither will you.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#537> Naturally, I took down my project right away... So a CEO bullied you. He threatened to have lawyers look at something, accused you of behaving poorly, and accused you of being difficult. He is being manipulative. He is trying to guilt / scare you into stopping. And it worked. For all readers... do not be afraid of lawyers. Especially if nobody has even talked to them yet. Lawyers do not like to lose cases, so will…
The judge will tell you all to go away and try to find an agreement. This agreement will either be Replit leaving you alone or Replit buying you out.
IANAL, but I was in a similar situation and I cannot see any circumstance where you get raked over the coals.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#538Slightly off-topic - what is a secure way to run arbitrary code in arbitrary languages in a server? I know replit's polygott docker container allows it. https://github.com/replit/polygott/
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#539I'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/…