One thing I don't understand is: how is that a CEO cannot anticipate the consequences of acting like a bully via email? The blog post will make a huge negative impact on the reputation of Replit... really, CEOs these days don't think before writing?
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
#72I could understand an over eager lawyer but this is the CEO of a company with $20 million in funding personally threatening to sic the lawyers on a one man open source project. This is evidence that: 1) he doesn’t have anything better to do, bad news for Replit, 2) he’s afraid of this little project, also bad news for Replit.
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Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
What leverage?
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#74Why 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…
> Why did you take it down? And why did you apologize?
I think taking it down (temporary at first) is prudent in that situation, but I agree about the apology. Don’t apologize unless you agree you have done something wrong.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#75https://twitter.com/amasad/status/1401617251464138754
Unbelievable and shameless.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#76Poor form by the repl.it CEO here, bullying a junior employee to take their weekend project down.
If your product is threatened by this, it's probably not a very good product.
I've used Repl.it multiplayer to interview candidates in the past, will probably look for an alternative in the future. If anyone knows of one that supports non-web languages (I already use codesandbox for frontend) like python, etc. this is the chance to pitch it.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#77The 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 have just been happy with that.
It takes more than just being able to run all the languages in sandboxes to compete - if you tried this, people would be mining bitcoin and hosting all sorts of awful stuff.
Really strange / insecure attitude.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#78Guys, I don’t know what this is about yet, but I know amjad (ceo). And I know that whatever is going on here, his intentions were pure. He’s proven himself to me that he’s pretty much the opposite of a sleezy corporate ceo who crushes intern side projects while twirling his mustache.
I just wanted to encourage everybody to chill on it for a moment and wait to see what’s up, because my spidey senses are screaming “miscommunication / crossed wires” rather than malicious intent, for what it’s worth.
EDIT: Fuck. https://i.imgur.com/cFYq7Nv.png
I'm going offline for awhile to focus on family matters. Evidently, I am not a good judge of character, and I need to stop believing in people without really knowing them.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#79This kind of feels like a bizarre inverse of the "I could build a better Facebook in a weekend if I wanted to."
A company feeling threatened enough to risk a PR nightmare on a one man open source project, when they know better than anyone that their real value is in scale, account features, UX, etc.
Re: Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
#80A 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.
It's kinda funny how their CEO writes on Twitter all the time that they are the best company in the world, with the best product, do most innovations in tech etc and 10 minutes later he is threatened by a small open-source project that wasn't even created to compete.