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Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project (2021)
- tcfhgj 2y ago> Please note that Riju is only available on IPv6-enabled networks due to the higher financial cost of supporting legacy protocols. Like it. More people should do this
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago> Riju is only available on IPv6-enabled networks ... More people should do this Of the 12 wireline ISPs here, 2 support IPv6. One of the two is available to 2% of the customers; the other costs 50% more than IPv4-only. For the extra money you get 5% of the upload + much higher latency. I'm looking into starting my own ASN just to get IPv6 here. In the US there are millions of locations stuck with IPv4 only networks due to ISPs that are solidly committed to never supporting it. IPv6 evangelists don't give a meaningful crap about those millions - and are happy to push IPv6 rosiness in a way that denies their existence. Because of this, IPv6-only services can only ever get so far off the ground. An exciting service is less exciting when it's unreachable from point B.
- renewiltord 2y agoYou can get a free 4 to 6 tunnel here https://tunnelbroker.net/ https://tunnelbroker.net/ It's really not a big deal.
- 0x073 2y agoNot sure if I fully understand how tunnelbroker works, but does the complete traffic get redirected over them? So it's as insecure as all these vpn services that sell your data. This is a big deal, for just getting access to ipv6.
- opheliate 2y agoMuch of your traffic is probably passing through Hurricane Electric servers already, given their position on the backbone (https://he.net https://he.net).
- 0x073 2y agook, didn't knew that it was a backbone.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y agoIt's true that HE is a backbone but there is an enormous difference between having bits of your traffic transiting a firehose and sending your entire session thru someone's endpoint. The latter is much more comprehensive and identifiable. This isn't to throw shade at HE; I don't recall any complaints about their integrity. It's just to say HE's tunnel is in a practical position to monitor, should they choose or be compelled.
- renewiltord 2y agoTraceroute to various websites. You'll see that the IPs on the pathway are owned by companies that are neither you nor the guy you're accessing. It's how the Internet works at the network layer. You may find that some people are on every path. Your carrier, certainly, but often the first provider they're connected to.
- 0x073 2y agoYes, didn't knew that this was a backbone. You'll see that the IPs on the pathway are owned by companies that are neither you nor the guy you're accessing. Yes, but you shouldn't add another one you didn't know (e.g. free vpn).
- Volundr 2y agoIt depends how big a deal you consider Netflix. They block HE tunnels.
- patcon 2y agoSeemingly they don't allow using gmail addresses to sign up. Seems like a really opinionated service. I guess maybe I should expect this sort of militant behaviour from the sort of ppl who run a chunk of the internet backbone? EDIT: realized x@googlemail.com should work[1] [1]: https://webapps.stackexchange.com/a/126265/19949 https://webapps.stackexchange.com/a/126265/19949
- remram 2y agoI mean, fair is fair, Google will block you from using search from a HE IP. Unless you're signed in, then you ONLY need to do like 10 CAPTCHAs per day.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y agoI've run across a half doz or so tunnel services. HE peers closest to my ISP; I'm looking at them as a temporary stopgap. With my own ASN, I have a shot at peering with my ISPs IX.
- skrebbel 2y agoThat line made me chuckle because if anything like that was on the original announcement, it should’ve become immediately obvious to the Replit CEO that this guy is not a threat. Excluding half the internet from your potential userbase isn’t much of a startup move.
- jolj 2y agoand is also a window to the guy's psyche, which makes me believe the line where he was "the most demanding intern" they had
- dkarras 2y agoWhat is the limiting factor there? I don't understand. I assumed these programming languages were working in a browser (wrapped into wasm or some other VM) so everything was client side. Is that not the case? Are they running the language kernels in their servers? I don't understand what the "cost" here is.
- zer00eyz 2y agoNeeds a 2021 tag Last time on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195 (4022 points!!!)
- saagarjha 2y agoAdded
- ayewo 2y ago(Are you a HN mod now? :) ) Not clear from your reply whether you added it (as a mod) or you are announcing to the gp that the year has since been added as at the time of your comment (i.e. by the poster or a mod).
- saagarjha 2y ago> you added it Yes > as a mod I consider adding a year to a post to be more of a janitorial service than moderation, similarly how some users can flag comments. But of course you can call it whatever you'd like
- ayewo 2y agoWell, I certainly can flag comments but don't have any ability to adjust the title of a post as you can. In a way, that makes you a mod even if you don't agree with the moniker.
- pvg 2y agobut don't have any ability to adjust the title of a post as you can. I can't find the specific dang comment out of the zillions but you can just email hn@ycombinator.com if you are lusting after the power to fix the years in titles.
- jaynpatel 2y agooh year sorry i forgot to add that. Thanks for pointing it out
- tomcam 2y agoAppears that OP, a former Replit intern, used Replit to create a site that might be construed as a Replit competitor. Replit responded with a heavy hand. I don’t care about Replit. But this just seems like a bad idea.
- ak_111 2y agoTbf Replit is an online IDE for full stack development, that means that almost any idea you work on Saas dev tooling could be construed as a competitor.
- throwaway290 2y agoYes so you should keep that in mind if you sign documents specifically agreeing not to do this in the next 2 years... we may never know what the guy signed, but I assume interns at least sign NDAs. The fact that CEO is a (insert bad word) is also true, however.
- remram 2y agoWe're now making INTERNS sign non-compete agreements??!
- bitnasty 2y agoIf NDAs were breached, that DEFINITELY would have been brought up in all of this.
- throwaway290 2y agoTrue...
- Zak 2y agoNoncompetes are illegal in California where Replit is based. As far as I can tell, they were illegal in 2021, and they've become more illegal since.
- paulddraper 2y agoThis is a lot of drama about irrelevant stuff. The core questions are IP rights and non-compete. What agreement did the employee enter into concerning these, and to what extent is this project relevant. Excerpts and matters of fact. The rest is childish noise.
- LeonB 2y agoReplit didn’t make any specific claims about IP rights or non-compete (and if they did, the onus would be on them). When their behaviour was made public they immediately backed down and didn’t proceed with any legal fight.
- littlestymaar 2y agoI'm not sure you can have non-compete close on an internship contract anyway (in my country you cannot for sure).
- paulddraper 2y agoIDK if that is true or not. It could be. If that is true, that author should have just ignored it.
- paulddraper 2y agoI'm not saying the noise is restricted to just one party.
- ossm1db 2y ago[flagged]
- dangysaurusx 2y ago[flagged]
- LeonB 2y agoWho is “psychosaurusx”?
- ljf 2y agoImportant to read this first: https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/#how-did-replit-respond-to-this-blog-post https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/#how-did-repli...
- coolThingsFirst 2y agoAnd the CEO was right, you can’t copy cat the idea of the place you worked at no matter how simple it is. It’s common sense - he did behave in an unethical way.
- chii 2y agoi dont think that's unethical - provided that no copyright is violated. Ideas are not copyrightable, and surely they do not have a patent on sites like replit.
- coolThingsFirst 2y agoLet's put it this way some CEO spent years finding a product market fit and they hire you - they pay you and let you have access to their internal conversations and ideas and you suddenly brainstorm a project with uncanny resemblance to what the company is making - that in my view is stealing IP and is very unethical and shady behavior.
- michaelmrose 2y agoWhat IP did they steal. Please be specific.
- ArdentAardvark 2y agoIt just isn't. You're allowed to make products that compete with products already on the market, even if you've worked for the company making that product. Unless there's specific IP that was stolen, I don't see how this is in any way unethical or shady. They hired you to develop that product, and you did. Nowhere in that contract is anything saying you can never use what you learned elsewhere. They'd need to pay you significantly more than what they paid you (which they won't). And there are great reasons why non-competes are basically invalid in most places.
- fragmede 2y ago> Unless there's specific IP that was stolen, To wit, stealing trade secrets is recognized as an actual crime, and got someone 8 years of jail for trying to sell the formula for Coca-cola to Pepsi.
- _shadi 2y agoSomeone interned at a company, saw and worked on the IP and architecture, and after leaving created something that can be viewed as a copy(the emails say that even some of the UI design and languages description were copied) of the core business of the place they worked at, maybe the response was a bit too heavy handed, but you don't exactly expect roses after doing something like that. This seems somewhat unethical, and whether it is legal or not that is up to lawyers and specialized people of law to decide, and the founder wanted those people to get involved to decide that, again nothing crazy to expect after you create a copy of a project you were paid (or at least trained) to work on and learn all about it.
- jongjong 2y agoThis is deceptive as his specific role at Replit had nothing to do with his later open source work. Also, Replit is not innovative as there exist many similar solutions. How can you be accused to copying someone's work if that work is itself a copy of other existing work? Moreover, quote from his article: > I worked for Replit in Summer 2019, where I was asked to rebuild Replit’s package management stack What does a package management stack have to do with an open source IDE? If someone interned as a doctor's assistant at a medical center and then later started their own medical center. Can their previous employer sue them for that? It's nonsense. There is nothing innovative or exclusive about launching a medical center. Just like there is nothing innovative or exclusive about launching an IDE. It's old tech that has been implemented 1000 times. The author is the only one who innovated on the concept by making it open source. If Replit can sue this guy, then Cloud9 can sue Replit, WebStorm can sue Cloud9, Microsoft can sue WebStorm, etc, etc... Who even invented the first IDE? Replit was deceptive. They know they are in the wrong and used malicious, unfounded legal threats to scare him into doing what they wanted.
- _shadi 2y ago> If someone interned as a doctor's assistant at a medical center and then later started their own medical center. Can their previous employer sue them for that? It's nonsense. As I said the legality of this is not so simple to answer, yes you can intern as a doctor at one place and then open a similar one, and if someone tries file a suit about this then I think it will be very hard to find a sympathetic judge to look into it, but once you bring IP into this it becomes a lot more complicated, calculus is also about ideas, yet it didn't stop Leibniz or Newton from making accusations of plagiarizing. >If Replit can sue this guy, then Cloud9 can sue Replit, WebStorm can sue Cloud9, Microsoft can sue WebStorm, etc, etc... Who even invented the first IDE? the difference here is that the guy worked/interned at replit, this what moves it for me from the founder being an asshole to a grey area where he sees someone had access to all resources at the company and now wants to use that knowledge(or at least having access to it) to create an alternative and he decides to go with a heavy handed approach before it becomes a big headache, was he nice in how he went about it? no
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- purple-leafy 2y agoI think all parties in this are bad. I think the guy is obviously young, and a bit naive . And really shouldn’t have gone to social media. And the CEO handled it poorly
- jdjankwkw 2y agoWhy not? He should roll over and allow someone with more money and power to threaten them? No thanks, I applaud his actions because it takes courage to do that in such a position. The CEO is a public facing figure and deserves the scrutiny. He was treating the kid like a peon. This world would be a lot better off if more people took to the airwaves to call out insufferable CEOs who think they are above others because they got a large round.
- purple-leafy 2y agoI agree with you on all that especially the power dynamic, I just think the intern guy also is a bit socially unaware. I mean he basically copied his employers business lol. Though as someone else said, if your moat is so shallow someone can copy it in a weekend…. Power to him. Really i wish we could all just work together on great things I try to stay out of the drama
- data_maan 2y agoIf some random dude on the internet copies it's ok, if he copies it, because he happened to work for them years ago it's not? There's no logic to that. > Really i wish we could all just work together on great things Indeed, but for that to happen you need to be open-source since day 1, and not work for profit. And even then you get ego issues, which this CEO apparently has. We'd need capitalism 2.0 because the current version just sets incentives to not make you work somewhat harmoniously together.
- michaelmrose 2y agoThe only thing causing the company from withdrawing illegal threats is social media.
- throwaway4good 2y ago"Luckily we're bigger now, and crucially have a lot of money to pay for top lawyers now if we're forced to go that route." As a top dog CEO you may think that. But it is incredible stupid, arrogant, and immature to put that in writing when dealing with one of the little people.
- anonzzzies 2y agoThe ceo of replit is arrogant; just check his tweets, especially responses.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- raverbashing 2y agoTrue Thanks but no thanks, my idea of work is not pursuing relentless work to help with somebody else's ego
- carrja99 2y agoYou should read that dudes Twitter account. It really can be something else sometimes.
- drivingmenuts 2y agoThe apology was a bit self-serving. Came across as something he had forced to do rather than something he needed or wanted to do. He pulled out the old hard-working kid-with-a-dream too soon.
- immibis 2y agoNot to mention "you were the most demanding intern we've ever had"
- js4ever 2y agoAnyone still using Replit? Or is it something from the past?
- ak_111 2y agoAm actually interested in this question in a non-snarky way. Many years ago, I taught lots of programming workshops in academia and managing the student environments was always a pain. So when I heard of replit and similar tools it always seemed to me like a good solution for this problem. However, I was struck recently when I went back to teaching how little in roads it made in this space, out of 4 universities in the UK (cohorts of 100s) I saw hardly anyone using it or even heard of it. It seems the preferred option now is to just use google colab, which works great but doesn't give students the feel of a full-blown IDE.
- dave84 2y agoThey messed up the pricing time and again sadly, then they made it free and now they killed the classroom product.
- virtualcharles 2y ago[dead]
- wombat-man 2y agoI haven't used it in a while, but it was great for playing around with python ideas as someone who maybe doesn't want to set everything up on their own machine
- IshKebab 2y agoI've used it occasionally. They provide some online compilers for languages that are hard to find elsewhere, e.g. TCL.
- Mesopropithecus 2y agoIn the intern's place, I probably would not have bragged about copying that company's idea. Then again, as the company, if I felt a former intern could threaten my business like that, I'd ask serious questions about my value proposition and moat (which could be premium features, sales, or an attractive/viral free tier - not too familiar with what they do). On a personal level, I can see how it could feel unfair, but the idea does not seem that original.
- noncoml 2y agoYou cannot patent or copyright ideas. Furthermore it is quite debatable if it’s unethical to copy ideas. What the intern did is absolutely fine in my book.
- snird 2y agoThe Replit CEO has proven himself time and time again to be.. this. I hope that every potential customer will consider the culture he cultivates. We don't need this in tech.
- bluish29 2y agoThis was discussed in about 1300 comments when it occurred in 2021. Is there anything new about replit that warranted the re-submission? And I see personal attacks on the CEO here in some comments that refer to his opinions about the most divisive topic on HN nowadays.
- user3939382 2y agoHow about how they offered a classroom product for teachers to deploy an online IDE. Then with no notice while people were in the middle of classes replit pulled the plug on it with no notice. No one should be patronizing a company like this.
- bluish29 2y agoThat was 7 months ago. They canceled a free plan for a product. Yes I agree that their communication were bad and didn't give enough warning for people. But how that related and how is that an answer to my question? Google used to give universities unlimited storage but even with their billions they pulled the plug and left universities in a difficult situation (so did MS later).
- user3939382 2y agoHow it’s related, to answer your question, is that it’s more evidence the company has horrible leadership. The more visibility of that the better, this CEO shouldn’t be rewarded with customers.
- pech0rin 2y agoNot sure why he thinks he is in the right here? I would be pissed too if an intern left and then made a website that was just copying the internal work. I love how he says with a straight face that he didnt use any of the code from replit when obviously as an intern he saw all the ideas and constructs. Its not like he had a mind wipe. I’m in a small minority on this site I’m sure but professionalism is important and this screams immaturity.
- Ray20 2y ago>but professionalism is important and this screams immaturity. Using knowledge that you have to create a competing product is professionalism, using Legal threats to eliminate competitors - is not.
- desi_ninja 2y agoKid from Jordan was a typical PR speak to get sympathy even when he is acting like a bully
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- freddealmeida 2y agoI think both are wrong. Replit should have used care considering their customers are developers that like to code, especially open source. Also Radon(?)while inspired by his internship played very close to a line. As an employer, I would be worried how easily it would be to cross the line.