Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project

Post by Ontol » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 1:22 PM UTC

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…

Post by dkersten » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 1:51 PM UTC

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.

Post by stevenhuang » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

shapiro92 wrote: post #918

on a seriously technical point of view. It is obvious the person kept the code repository and when making a new project the commit history (or part of it) moved together. So excluding how the CEO acted, it is obvious the intern has the codebase (or part of it) and I am pretty sure that under their contract they are not allowed to do what they did. As for the way they approach things, ye the CEO is from YC getting pra…

Post by kyawzazaw » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #729

kyawzazaw wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not personal details. It was relevant [professional] correspondence and you can see how professional the student was. In contrast to the CEO, who said along the lines - we got a lot of money and we have lawyers.

Replying here to your other comment: "however there’s not really an expectation of privacy in professional correspondence" Uhm, yes there is. Internal company email as well as email between companies is expected to stay between the sender and receivers. Almost every corporate email footer mentions this explicitly. I'm quite convinced that neither employers or employees would be cool with their emails being dumped on…

Post by Shicholas » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

atoav wrote: post #925

adventureadmin wrote: post #855

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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