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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

#571

Post by aerosmile »

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…

Love this comment and support it 100%. I think what the OP tried to express and not everyone might have picked up on: there's usually a step between where this case is at right now and a lawsuit being officially filed - that step would be a cease and desist letter. In it, the company (aka, their lawyer) would state the basis for their claims and would make a clear case for why they think they are entitled to those claims. At that point, you'd have a better idea if you're being bullied or if they have a case. IANAL so take this all with a grain of salt, but it would be unusual for a claimant to optimize for taking you to court over optimizing for actually resolving the case. The latter can be achieved at a fraction of the time and cost with a cease and desist letter, so that's where that step comes from. The downside is that the letter could be officially registered and could become a public record, which you would have to proactively disclose in your interactions with current and future investors.

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

#572

Post by mousepilot »

That company sucks but I predict they would win in court, simply because you made something that resembles their work, and thats plenty to convince a jury or the average judge.

Sure, it sounds like a generic enough page, and there are plenty like it, but how many have been put up by an intern at a company that ALSO put one up.

Additionally, you'll probably win here at HN, but in all probability you will not get a HN reader as either a judge or a jury.

Might be an unpopular opinion but its mine!

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

#573

Post by CRConrad »

samatman wrote: post #261
KingOfCoders wrote: post #95

Vote me down, but Ycombinator: "It's all about the founders blah blah blah" - if their process finds and funds these kind of people, the process is broken. https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/repl-it

Yeah, holding a VC fund and accelerator responsible for every tantrum thrown by one of their proteges is worth a downvote. This kind of catastrophizing doesn't contribute. For one thing, you jumped from "this kind of person" to "these kind of people", without supporting evidence. Do you have a process which can identify, in advance, everyone who is going to be an asshole to a former intern? While picking enough winne…

> For one thing, you jumped from "this kind of person" to "these kind of people", without supporting evidence.

Not much of a jump: "kind" at the very least strongly implies the plural already. If you mean just one person, you say "this person", whereas "this kind of person" means "this person and others like him". AFAICS "this kind of person" and "these kind of people" are pretty much synonyms; the only difference between them is that the former is grammatically correct.

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

#574

Post by lupire »

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…

A huge number of companies including YC companies are built by Ex Amazon and ex Google employees cloning corporate tech.

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

#575

Post by Keyframe »

zo1 wrote: post #509
tiltrus wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

amasad is a regular HN'er who's very active in all posts related to repl.it. Very immature behavior on Amjad's part. I'm considering pulling our corporations subscription and moving to Stackblitz now....

Agreed - this is very immature behavior and they will lose lots of goodwill and clients as a result of ego.

Was considering subscription, not anymore.

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

#576

Post by mssundaram »

jtouri wrote: post #490
whymauri wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They offered to hire him before insinuating he was a bad/demanding intern, as well. This is standard manipulative behavior and has little benefit to anyone besides attempting to make the intern feel bad. This isn't the first time I've seen a founder resort to this exact type of behavior before threatening legal action.

Reading this part really made my head shake. Attacking a former intern like that, why would anyone want to intern there after this?

You should check out Replit's Glassdoor reviews - avoid!

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

#577

Post by ipodopt »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #6

Are there any open source competitors to Replit that are seeking patrons? I have been encouraged by the rapid fire Show HNs of open source first startups [1], and this space seems ripe for such open tooling. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...

https://code.visualstudio.com/learn/collaboration/live-share

https://code.visualstudio.com/learn/develop-cloud/overview

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

#579

Post by TeMPOraL »

mindcrime wrote: post #467

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 y…

Given he posted it on HN of all places, he effectively did just that, just in a longer form.

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

#580

Post by dragandj »

pbecotte wrote: post #456
dragandj wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

General ideas (such as most of repl.it stuff) isn't covered by IP. I doubt that the (former) employee copied exact code in this case. It seems to me that he re-implemented some vaguely similar functionality. Moreover, most of that stuff existed before repl.it...
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