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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

#921

Post by atoav »

mac-chaffee wrote: post #143

All these battles over IP where there's an enormous power imbalance strike me as problems of ego. In college, I made a website and I thought another student "stole" the idea. I considered my legal options, but I'm glad I stopped there, even if I did have a case. The other student was never a serious threat to my idea and in fact lost interest in the idea next year. So the only harm I suffered was to my ego that thoug…

I sure too understand where his feelings come from, but the questions are not our first implusive feelings but how we act on them and what we get in the end.

In your example you probably did the right thing by not persuing. But you could have also persued and fought a needless battle. Or it could have gone the other way: You could have overcome yourself and even teamed up with that other person.

Finding people doing similar things can be very shocking, because it threatens your self image. But it is also a chance to learn and grow, because who other than the person doing similar things as you did is someone to learn from?

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

#922

Post by tjpnz »

risyachka wrote: post #80
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.

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.

Well the product is obvious and easy to replicate without specialised knowledge. CEO likely realises this as much as everyone else so feels the need to overcompensate with personal marketing (and apparently now lawyers).

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

#923

Post by gtyras2mrs »

jeffybefffy519 wrote: post #583
stevebmark wrote: post #58

Did the author disclose the work on Riju as a prior invention before joining Repl.it? If so that puts him in the clear. I would also check your hiring contract to see what kind of clauses are in there about prior inventions. For larger companies, I don't think this company behavior would surprise anyone. I think I can understand where Repl.it is coming from. All I know is this behavior (by Riju author) isn't somethin…

Of course its in bad taste/unethical to build any open source clone of a product for a company you used to work for. Doesnt matter how shitty the CEO behaves, how unoriginal the idea you copied is. Incredible that had to scroll so far down HN to find this comment.

Say you interned for Twitter for a while - and you decided to create a small open-source self-hosted microblogging site for you to play around with.

Bad taste? Unethical? I think that's going too far.

Since the open-source project here doesn't seem to be running at scale nor having support for user-accounts or anything as such. Is working on an open-source toy for the sake of it - somehow unethical because it's related to a previous employer's product?

I work for a financial institution, and if i create a small bit of opensource code in the future (after leaving my current job) that relates to banking, is it unethical or wrong?

Quoting the blogpost,

>there were 38 visits to Riju during the month of February. (Half of those were probably me.)

>the architecture was limited to running on a single server

>Riju categorically lacked all of these features, including: having a user account, saving your work, sharing your work, publishing webapps, persistent workspaces, discussion forums, integration with GitHub, etc. etc.

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

#924

Post by hawthornio »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #896
ping_pong wrote: post #825

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no ethical lines crossed. If you have proof that he copied code from your repo then that is illegal. But if he copied the idea, there's nothing ethically wrong with that. The one who crossed an ethical line is you. You can't protect ideas, only actual code. What is ethically wrong is bullying a former intern with legal threats. You need to learn this, I guess the hard way.

Many people would say it's ethically wrong to copy an idea. In fact, it is common to see people up in arms on HN about it, when the power dynamic is reversed.

> it's ethically wrong to copy an idea

Who says this? Certainly we have intellectual property laws to protect novel, recent, and specific ideas. However, “Running code on another machine” doesn’t seem to meet any of those criteria.

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

#925

Post by atoav »

adventureadmin wrote: post #855
Shicholas wrote: post #405

Unpopular opinion, IAAL and frankly Replit has a case that will pass the "motion to dismiss" stage when litigation starts getting expensive b/c of discovery. The OP worked for Replit and therefore had access to private source code or "trade secrets" before creating his project. It'd take expert testimony for the OP to prove in court that his OSS project was not influenced in any way by Replit's closed-source code, wh…

I'm surprised that others don't find mentioning your former company's name in a commit message, for similar software, an admission that you were inspired or thinking of that company's design. When software is both your hobby and your profession, you have to think carefully about what you mix and how. The developer also goes onto state that what he did is nothing new and he decides what repl.it's IP is on their behalf…

But if source code was copied repl.it could have said "this is our code and their code side to side, spot the difference". Especially given the current (negative) mood that would have won them the public opinion. The fact that they didn't do such a thing suggests to me that they know they don't have a true case. Because if they had, it would be a entirely different discussion by now

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

#926

Post by LocalH »

jkhdigital wrote: post #787
LocalH wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely disgusting for that to be the case. Tell me again why we should treat America's government as anything other than evil and despotic?

Because it’s not North Korea’s government? You say that as if organizing and running a beneficent and just government is a trivial matter. People are evil and despotic, and every government is full of people.

>You say that as if organizing and running a beneficent and just government is a trivial matter.

Not really. The things this country has done since its inception are deplorable, and yet we have people in this country that want to prevent people from learning more accurate history to keep fake, nationalist "patriotism" at an all time high. They want the system to be cruel and hurtful. What is there in America to even be proud of nowadays?

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

#927

Post by timdaub »

I can have empathy with the Replit CEO. I've had projects where strangers from the internet started to "friendly-copy"/fork things I either had talked about or that I straight out did. I didn't speak up and I ended up feeling super discouraged to continue the copied project. In the end neither the copycat nor I had success. But had he collaborated instead of doing his own thing, things would be different now.

I get it, threatening with legal action is harsh. This blog post on the other hand is also not nice. For me personally, I'd rather not engage with either of the two as they seem to not being able to manage a professional conflict without spilling it publicly.

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

#928

Post by weiliddat »

CheezeIt wrote: post #784
catillac wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ 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…

> You still are saying the intern is wrong, which isn’t good. That’s a good thing. That’s what happens when you have integrity. There is no reason to change his position on the subject of ex-employees making clones of the product.

I don't think he necessarily needed to say that - he can apologize for poor behavior without trying to reassert his moral/ethical stand in every public-facing comment (here, on Twitter).

Taking the analogy of the punch/stab example from one of the cousin comments above, it would be really strange for people to believe that because you apologized for retaliating the original act of getting punched was blameless.

Of course the analogy of physical violence is more explicit, less vague, less nuanced than the context of IP. If he wants to explain/assert his moral/philosophical ideas on IP, then it should be done separately in a more nuanced, detailed manner than what he's been doing all this while, which is acting out in retaliation of a seemingly small threat.

This also shows insecurity/weakness. He could have acted as/been the bigger person but gave up on it on every turn.

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

#929

Post by HotHotLava »

fleddr wrote: post #679

I naturally sympathize with underdogs and this seems a classic case of bullying and power abuse. That said, this trend where such disputes are made public including personal details continues to shock me. It must be my European perspective. In particular, just screen grabbing personal conversations and publishing them to the world without permission, with the person's full name, and then adding accusations...I find a…

Amjad is not writing these mails as a private person but in his capacity as the CEO of repl.it (as evidenced by his threat to employ company resources to shut this site down), so this is not personal but professional conversation. The name and picture of the CEO is also made publicly available by the company itself (https://replit.com/site/about), so this email thread is not revealing any unknown personal details.
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