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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

#561

Post by dang »

cwkoss wrote: post #525
normac2 wrote: post #146

I'm on a job search, and Replit is one of the places I was going to apply, off of their listings on HN Who is Hiring?. So much for that, and I suspect a lot of devs are going to feel the same. (I don't think I'm good enough to get in, but there're a lot of really good devs who read HN who are.) In a seller's market for developers, this could hurt them in the form of less good talent applying. That said, my gut feelin…

Would it be against HN's rules to reply to Who's Hiring posts from Replit with a link to this article?

Yes, it would be against the rules at the top of the Who Is Hiring threads.

We moderate HN less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is involved [1]. That's why the OP has been at #1 all day - normally we downweight indignation posts at least a little, to compensate for the default tendency to massively upvote them, but we haven't touched this thread in any way. I don't think we'd take that so far as to selectively turn off the Who Is Hiring rules, though. It would set a confusing precedent.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

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

#562

Post by Dah00n »

randompwd wrote: post #138
stuaxo wrote: post #77

The threats seem directly at odds with the CEOs tweet here https://twitter.com/amasad/status/1401617251464138754 This whole saga is pretty sad really. While replit isn't doing very much in wrapping these languages in a frontend (and something that is clearly straightforward to replicate), they are doing all the work that comes with scaling that to many users on the web (I guess that includes moderation). They should…

My guess would be more the available source rather than the website itself. I think it's fair to say somebody who interned at a place would have had things explained to them and had access to internal design docs which the intern themselves wouldnt necessarily have figured out if working from scratch. I find it very bizarre for an intern to do this.

If it is bizarre for an intern then how does it look when "employee #1 of Code Academy" starts Repl.it right after working on the same kind of thing there? This smells like someone who saw himself in the intern and disliked it.

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

#563

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

mmastrac wrote: post #551
cwkoss wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be against HN's rules to reply to Who's Hiring posts from Replit with a link to this article?

It would likely go against the spirit of the community to hound a job posting like that. I don't disagree with the sentiment, but turning the hiring posts into any sort of flamewar/off-topic discussion dilutes the value of those threads.

I disagree: If a company posts a job on HN, it is 100% reasonable to point out to the community that working there can come back to bite you.

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

#564

Post by sombremesa »

cycomanic wrote: post #372
brabel wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Just look at this from the other side: you employ lots of people to work on some product, you teach them "secrets of the trade", send them to conferences, let them participate in making decisions, giving them extraordinary insight in the area of work you are active on... and as soon as they leave your company, they use all that knowledge to try to create something with that on their own (I can understand it, once yo…

Codecademy does let you run code in the browser, so they would actually have a case at least as strong as repl.it does against this intern.

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

#565

Post by HellsMaddy »

Is it ironic that Amjad’s last tweet before this post hit the front page links to a hashtag on his website where people are building clones of famous games like Bejeweled, Mario, and Zelda?

https://twitter.com/amasad/status/1401760537390714882

https://replit.com/apps/kaboom

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

#566

Post by jacksnipe »

munk-a wrote: post #536
devoutsalsa wrote: post #420

Earlier 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…

Law suits cost both parties a whole truckload of money - replit almost certainly has a larger war chest than you and can outlast you. 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 relian…

If you don't own your home, I fail to see how it could never throw you out of your home.

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

#567

Post by [deleted] »

Dah00n wrote: post #547
tzs wrote: post #389

Earlier 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,…

No but the CEO worked at Code Academy so he actually kinda did what he is accusing the intern of doing.

[deleted]

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

#568

Post by squarefoot »

bsjxh wrote: post #435
brabel wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If he had at least come up with something original based on that knowledge Repl.it itself is completely unoriginal... there's been websites doing this stuff for decades now. Of course, the CEO has to live in denial of this, and is easily threatened/offended when confronted by this reality.

> there's been websites doing this stuff for decades now.

Would this hold up in case of a lawsuit? I mean, can Replit's CEO accuse the guy of copying some of their work if there's evidence of prior art that predates both projects?

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

#570

Post by stOneskull »

jascii wrote: post #260
codingdave wrote: post #111

> 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…

In the context of the article I took that as a gesture of goodwill while trying to talk out the misunderstanding. They had a relationship before this happened and it sounded like he wanted to maintain that relationship. In the end, this was a hobby project for the author, and I can understand he might not want to deal with the stress involved with possible legislation. The bully is the aggressor here and lets try not…

yep. we just won't ever use replit. their name is mud now.
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