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

641–650 of 1001 posts

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

#641

Post by CRConrad »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #57
swang wrote: post #39

Assuming 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.

Where did you get the "refused a bunch of offers" bit from; did I miss that, or...?

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

#642

Post by mdoms »

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…

> If I were in the same situation as OP

Sure you would.

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

#643

Post by ipaddr »

nkmnz wrote: post #485
hashbig wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I unfollowed him after he tweeted that Repl.it is the most innovative company in the world. Yeah, not SpaceX or Neuralink or Pfizer. A company that runs docker images is the most innovative company.

Are you referring to Pfizer because of the mRNA-vaccine? That has actually been invented by the German biotech startup BioNTech ;-)

The manufactoring at Pfizer is pretty impressive.

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

#644

Post by elzbardico »

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…

Unless you're wealthy, really wealthy, please DO BE afraid of lawyers.

Specially in the US, where justice is mostly a rich man's game.

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

#645

Post by aphroz »

Filligree wrote: post #449
dragonwriter wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am aware that this is not the 1950's superman definition of justice. It’s not any definition of justice, its simply the rule of the powerful over the weak.

For those living in America, that’s what they can expect. It does no-one any good to pretend otherwise.

"You found paradise in America, you had a good trade, you made a good living, the police protected you, and there were courts of law."

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

#646

Post by neweggrma »

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...

Eclipse Theia: https://theia-ide.org/

It's an open source project bringing the VS Code user interface to the browser. It supports a large number of VS Code extensions.

It is by-far the stand-out in this arena, and yet seems to be sadly very unknown. VS Code Liveshare and friends are all proprietary junk, to be polite.

GitPod.io is a directly usable end-user product.

Theia is used by Google, ARM, Arduino, IBM, Huawei, Ericsson, Red Hat, and more. It's seriously good stuff.

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

#647

Post by [deleted] »

tommoor wrote: post #634

> we’re also excited to announce one of the first (of many!) projects that Amjad has worked on with us: Codecademy Labs, the easiest way to play with JavaScript, Ruby, and Python online I'll just leave this here so we can all bask in the insane hypocrisy of this entire episode. https://www.codecademy.com/resources/blog/amjad-joins-codeca... Edit: See Amjad's response below – seems Repl.it may have pre-dated this hiri…

[deleted]

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

#648

Post by weezin »

imhoguy wrote: post #526
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.

I think I am going to make Riju clone next weekend, got a name even: Disreplty.

replitsuperiority would be a good one too.

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

#649

Post by 123123as1asd12 »

I think both of you are wrong.

One, you worked for them then took their idea (which they took form someone else) and made an open sourced better version of it. I don't care if you did not use any internal information, it looks like you did to everyone else.

Two, Why the hell did you share it with him? to rub it in?

Three, actually I'm on his side, even though he is acting childish.

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

#650

Post by [deleted] »

iabacu wrote: post #238
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…

The difference between what Amjad tweets publicly and what Amjad threatens the ex-intern privately is jarring. That makes me think that either the tweets are empty virtue signaling; or Amjad is legit worried that an intern open-source project can accidentally outcompete his company!

[deleted]
Post reply on HN