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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

#791

Post by greenyoda »

Aeolun wrote: post #763
smnrchrds wrote: post #344

Earlier 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…

How does this even work? If someone sues me, but they have no case, and I’m not interested, why would I even defend myself. Even presenting no evidence the judge would rule in my favour.

If you fail to appear for a court proceeding, the judge will decide in favor of the plaintiff (the person suing you):

> Default judgment is a binding judgment in favor of either party based on some failure to take action by the other party. Most often, it is a judgment in favor of a plaintiff when the defendant has not responded to a summons or has failed to appear before a court of law. The failure to take action is the default. The default judgment is the relief requested in the party's original petition.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_judgment

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

#792

Post by parafactual »

rurabe wrote: post #781
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…

pretty weird/low class move to build a free clone of the product you just worked on. pretty petty decision to threaten to sue your former intern for his weird move. also, threatening someone with money is a pretty surefire way to look like an asshole. similarly petty decision to spend hours documenting everything to post on HN and start throwing mud in public. everyone seems well within their legal rights but ethical…

Is it really "petty" if you are receiving dubious legal threats from a large corporation? Even if one is confident that they haven't, say, infringed IP, legal fees can be crippling.

It seems worse to keep quiet if you are being bullied by a well-known and respected person/entity more powerful than you.

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

#793

Post by aetch »

amasad wrote: post #757

Hey everyone, I want to apologize for the inappropriate use of power here. While I do believe there is an ethical line that was crossed here, I should have called him to understand his point of view and work it out. Which is what I'll try to do now, and see if we can get his project back up again. I'm sorry Radon. The lesson for me here is to internalize how I'm no longer the struggling kid from Jordan fighting for m…

No one cares about your "origin story" of spending a decade to create a web shell that isn't very novel.

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

#794

Post by andrew_ »

jcrites wrote: post #771
amasad wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a clone of Replit that we made work at Codecademy. I started working on Replit (or repl.it) back when I was a student in Jordan. I didn't have a laptop so every time I wanted to get some programming done I had to setup a development environment at the university or at work. The idea for Replit was when you needed a repl to do some coding you should easily get one from anywhere including a mobile device. I th…

California law does not recognize non-compete agreements. Your heardquarters are in San Francisco. Good luck. Unless you have ironclad evidence that he stole intellectual property from your company you don't have a legal case to stand on. I have offered to pay the student's legal fees in exchange for putting the GitHub repository back up, with the provision of reviewing the contracts he signed with you to ensure ther…

I'll happily contribute to a GoFundMe for the defense. I haven't made it through all of the comments, but I wonder if this isn't a case the EFF would be interested in.

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

#795

Post by jrockway »

I've tried to comment on this article a few times, because I'm horrified, but can't really find the words.

I guess the thing I keep coming back to is whether or not a CEO even has the power to engage "top lawyers" to settle a score with a former intern. I'm just kind of imagining the board meeting, where someone asks "how is that hiring going for a new principal engineer for the foobar team" and the CEO replied "we scrapped that position, I'm using the money to go after this intern that duplicated our website over the weekend."

I have to imagine the reply isn't going to be "oh, great idea, keep me posted", but rather something more like "uhhhhhhh.... can we not?" Like, it just doesn't seem like a good financial decision to me. Let's say this is a solid case (which it isn't; or at least, nobody can point to the patent that's being infringed, or the literal source text that was illegally copied, or the NDA that Radon signed). The best case is you get a few hundred thousand dollars in damages. But the intern doesn't have that kind of money, so best case, it gets paid back in installments over many, many years. You are trading the opportunity to use that money right now to grow your company and make your investors rich, at the cost of not teaching some intern a lesson. It's unclear what sort of positive effect that could possibly have on the future of your company or an intern. OK, interns won't clone your product. That was pretty unlikely already, and reimplementing an idea is a lot easier than running a business.

I guess I just don't see the point. All I can say is that Amjad was mad and personally hurt, and people do dumb things in that position. A CEO should see past that and say "you know what, I'm going to save this as a draft tonight and see how I feel in the morning". He didn't, and the company is probably over at this point. A lesson for us all -- sometimes you're mad, and can't do anything about it. Focus that energy into making your product better, or going for a run or something :)

Finally, I guess to sum this up, it makes me sick to my stomach. Threatening someone a year out of college with financial ruin. Who does that!?! I feel terrible just standing by watching this.

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

#796

Post by sudosysgen »

nso wrote: post #427
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 what the ex-intern did can be summarized as slapping an eval() around a form submission and that would somehow threaten your business model then your product is intellectually void and garbage.

I mean, it's even in the name - REPL - it's been invented before.

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

#797

Post by sudosysgen »

EarlKing wrote: post #689
29athrowaway wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the plot of the movie Antitrust.

Only if you equate sternly worded letters from the CEO with a visit from murderous thugs who steal your stuff.

I don't think threatening an extortionate lawsuit that's going to cost 100k$ is morally any better as stealing 100k$ worth of stuff and destroying it.

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

#798

Post by [deleted] »

horsemans wrote: post #762
amasad wrote: post #757

Hey everyone, I want to apologize for the inappropriate use of power here. While I do believe there is an ethical line that was crossed here, I should have called him to understand his point of view and work it out. Which is what I'll try to do now, and see if we can get his project back up again. I'm sorry Radon. The lesson for me here is to internalize how I'm no longer the struggling kid from Jordan fighting for m…

Explain the ethical line that was crossed.

[deleted]

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

#799

Post by hashbig »

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…

I already cancelled my subscription for the hacker plan on Replit, I not going to support a bully. Also, I expect people to upload mirrors of riju the same way they did with youtube-dl when Github decided to take it down.

Edit: nvm it's already happening: https://github.com/umesh-timalsina/riju

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

#800

Post by andreyf »

PhineasRex wrote: post #675
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…

This explains a lot of why he's so threatened by this random POC. He's projecting onto the author the exact thing that he did.

Precisely, and in that context, let's remember that such projection is fundamental to our psychology. Thus, this story would better serve as litany of cautionary vignettes of humans being human than a story of David v Goliath, a tale of The Demanding Intern, or anything else bigger-than-life.
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