Open Source Project DESTROYED By Legal Threats

[@Heater-v1.0.0]

When our little start up was threatened with legal action from the company we had previously worked, who thought we were using their code my partner replied to their email thus: "Fuck you. If you try to sue us you will lose". Finnish people can be rather direct like that. We never heard from them again.

[@comradepeter87]

LMAOO based sigma chad co-founder

[@cotne20031995]

apparently Finnish people know how to finish corporate bullying

[@gerdokurt]

cool story. but then, you are in america, the company actually sues the tough finnish guy. the tough finnish guys seeks legal advice, will cry in tears and close his little start up when he finds out that fighting a legal battle eats up his capital before a decision is made!

[@timmy7201]

I once had a manager, who accused me of utilizing company code in my open-source projects. I explained that I did the opposite, reuse my own open-source libraries in their company code base. He followed up, asking for proof! I replied: 1) _My initial GitHub commit on these libraries, was done 2 years prior of working for this company!_ 2) _It are the only libraries, in the whole company code-stack, that don't look like hastily written sh**!_ The discussion ended there...

[@Heater-v1.0.0]

@@gerdokurt I know what you mean. But hey my partner happens to have a highly qualified lawyer of international business as a girlfriend. We are in Finland, the aggressor is in Ireland. We know what resources they have. We also know they have no leg to stand on. Also, the tactic is to tell them straight and forcibly that they don't have a chance and we won't back down. With the expectation that brings them to a halt immediately. If not, if they persist, OK then we fold. Call it a game of poker, bluff and counter bluff.

[@devflo]

I suddenly feel the urge to build a replit clone

[@themisir]

same

[@leohofer7502]

we need to get building repliz clones on the same level as hello world

[@blinking_dodo]

@@leohofer7502 Every new website is a replit clone by default. 🙃

[@IARRCSim]

A name like replit is asking to be replicated.

[@paulpinecone2464]

Sir, I strongly advise you against this course of action lest you expose yourself to legal action from my recently Incorporated organization ReplitReplit.

[@HairyPixels]

So why is Replit valuable if some intern can clone it in their spare time?

[@spankminister]

What’s the opposite of a moat? A ramp? A ladder right up to the castle wall?

[@antonlatukha5845]

There are a lot of those.

[@Brainiac5]

Thats what the CEO is afraid people will realize hahahaha

[@nkravi1]

Able to handle 7 million users is one big plus point. But for them come down this strong on an intern doesn’t look good.

[@HairyPixels]

@@Brainiac5 lol yup

[@chuckmcclain8789]

Replit is scummy. They shut down their edtech service with one days notice halfway through the school year last week, and my company has been flooded with requests from teachers for help saving their curriculums. Like seriously who gives only 24 hours notice to like 1000 customers that their curriculums they made simply won’t work anymore?

[@Onedeag-qw3yc]

their ceo is the biggest joke. Dude just says the dumbest things on twitter. i just know he's surrounded by 'yes men'

[@Master-ls2op]

they got hacked again .... soryy not sorry....my ethical hacking class accidently got back in the day all they client data and passwords.... they not very good site or secure. plane text passwords. and you can log in to they system from they code box.

[@mattymattffs]

Anyone that used them it's brain-dead anyway

[@SoftBreadSoft]

Sounds of questionable legality. Duties of service provision and whatnot.

[@janfrank3453]

By that logic, hiring from a competitor is also unethical. No one is leaving his experience at the door.

[@darkopz]

If they use those company secrets and then write down how they used those company secrets to build something better, it most definitely is. I’m a bit surprised at the people trying to justify what the intern did…

[@EllipsesDots]

@@darkopz I truly don't think the intern did anything wrong. He didn't make a competitor, he didn't steal code, he just used his experience and knowledge to make a fun side project. He didn't use 'company secrets' or anything patented or protected.

[@MrDevianceh]

@@darkopz thats why there are no-compete clauses. im assuming he didnt have one.

[@darkopz]

@@MrDevianceh Theres a difference between making something again black box when there’s no non compete versus working somewhere and directly lifting their work and making it your own.

[@darkopz]

@@EllipsesDots It seems like he did use company code though? That’s what it seemed like. It would have been an interesting case to see what the courts would think.

[@galvanizeddreamer2051]

Software company: Threatens to sue someone for using experience they obtained at their company to make a competitor. The entire Telecommunications contracting industry: "I have worked at 7 different companies that all do the exact same thing, half of which were founded by disgruntled employees of the other half, my parent company is subcontracting to my competitors, from which I have poached employees, and my former coworker is now my client contact and effective boss."

[@Infinatummedia]

I think the real takeaway here is, NEVER /threaten/ legal action. Either you're bringing lawyers in, in which case they're the ones making contact (because they think you have a case), or you're not. While scaring people with the potential might be useful in specific cases, the chances that it'll backfire are high, and you can lose your entire company over a weird vendetta against some obscure project

[@toooes]

take this comment down or we will be forced to pursue legal action against you

[@Jutastre]

Your threat should be in the form of a C&D and lawyers should already be involved in writing that, even if it's just an intimidation tactic.

[@arkadius228]

I decided to follow your advice. You will receive a court summon shortly.

[@EddyVinck]

The way he talked down on the guy like saying he was the most demanding intern 🤢 Did he forget the task they gave the guy as an intern? 😂😂

[@Tassdo]

In some countries (like France), it is even illegal to hire an intern to take on the responsabilities that would normally be given to an zmployee. They are here to be trained, not to be used as cheap labor.

[@ZephrymWOW]

Intern ✔, Making the project open source during the high of the "iTs fReE lABoR" craze ✔, ethical company ❌

[@andrina118]

He shit his pants when he realised there's probably evidence of replit tasking him to do a FLOSS version

[@dorbie]

I think the best part was the oblivious self-own, the most demanding intern who implemented their core functionality and then some as a side project.

[@maxjenkins6193]

My takeaway with this is that replit is shockingly easy to reproduce and we shouldn't be paying for it

[@TheNewton]

If you value your time you should.

[@deidyomega]

If you think replit is just about writting code, then you prob think github is just a "hard drive in the cloud" to store code yeah?

[@Mysdia]

It's fine to Pay for ReplIt... Just that the thing you are paying for is *Hosting* and System resources on their infrastructure to host your web applications, and a few quality of life improvements If you use ReplIt's dev tools. An Open source clone to ReplIt is Useless unless you pay a lot of money to some provider to Co-locate a server to run your open source clone on top of. The whole point of PaaS services like Replit is.. just like Google GCP or AWS LAmbda, they _ARE_ your Hosting service provider for the apps as well, so that you don't need to maintain your own servers. The infrastructure ReplIt relies on is basically free and open source stuff; the Ability to have a web interface run code is the least importantthing.... ReplIt itself seems like a clone of Glitch. Secondly... I got to question the ethics of ReplIt itself Exploiting all these Open source language interpreters through a web app and Failing to publish full source code for their web app.

[@skycaptain95]

It is lol @@deidyomega

[@mateusamelio1737]

@@deidyomega yes

[@KnightMirkoYo]

Lesson learned: record phone calls from people that thretened to sue you even if this is supposed to be a friendly "apology call".

[@kuhluhOG]

If you can. Some countries (or states in the US) require agreement from both sides.

[@MadaraUchihaSecondRikudo]

@@kuhluhOGAlso good luck if you own an iPhone...

[@deidyomega]

@@MadaraUchihaSecondRikudo You can use a bluetooth headset that records the audio. Connect the bt headset to your phone, take the call, press the record button, both sides are recorded. Super easy, and pretty cheap

[@dimanarinull9122]

​@MadaraUchihaSecondRikudo if you STILL use apple products, you kinda deserve it tbh. Unless you are just one of those people who still use their X+ yo phone and simply didn't switch to something better.

[@Turalcar]

Or just don't do it over the phone.

[@bertram-raven]

Always ask the accuser to provide a concrete example. When they do, rip it apart but do ask for a better example. If they do not provide anything or no better example, tell them they need to do so or you will ask for legal discovery through access to all source code. Watch for the "Chicken With No Head" reaction.

[@GamingKing-jo9py]

spicy

[@ImperiumLibertas]

This is seriously great. If they are going to claim similarities between architectures the burden is with them to prove which would require providing source code. Sounds like you may have gone through this yourself.

[@connorskudlarek8598]

Definitely not unethical to work on something similar. Even nearly identical in function (though differently written). Copy + Paste is a different story. If Sam Altman didn't go back to OpenAI, is it unethical for him to work on LLMs and AI? Absolutely not.

[@RajinderYadav]

you're comparing a co-funder to an intern? one created the product and company from bootstrap, another walked in, was given a job to do and learned in the process. it's still uncleared if he was paid or not. i personally don't like companies making interns work for free to gain experience.

[@youtubeenjoyer1743]

@@RajinderYadavfound the CEO of replit.

[@SourceOfViews]

@@ControversybutComedy-ev7nh I'd argue with a non-compete it becomes legal punishable, but not necessarily unethical.

[@JiggyJones0]

​@@SourceOfViewsyou're conflating ethics with morals. Breaking a contract is always unethical.

[@TheNewton]

​@@JiggyJones0 "Breaking a contract is always unethical." you serious? ahHAHHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAH 🎪🤡

[@tsh4k]

If your IP can be easily replicated from memory by a junior developer (which is not necessarily what happened here), then your IP doesn't deserve legal protection.

[@SylvanFeanturi]

I don't think I agree. Just because your idea is simple, but no one come up with it before you, means your idea don't deserve protection?

[@twothreeoneoneseventwoonefour5]

@@SylvanFeanturi Hot take: nothing deserves protection. If he didn't sign an *actual* NDA that *explicitly* prohibited him from doing ANY kind of similar work with the same intention(NO MATTER if it's copied code/design decions or whole unique(whatever that means) code), then everyone should be able to build and deploy anything they want. It shouldn't be that companies are scaried of a single individual overtaking them, but the other way around, if anything.

[@SylvanFeanturi]

@@twothreeoneoneseventwoonefour5 Not sure if I understand. You think intellectual property shouldn't exist?

[@senoraraton]

Does my design, written a junior deserve legal protection? This is a brain dead take, that only benefits the giant fish, and destroys the small guy. Please try again.

[@senoraraton]

@@twothreeoneoneseventwoonefour5 The problem with this is that it only benefits the big fish, and will stomp out any little guy. If you write some cool code, amazon can just swoop by with their GIANT platform, steal your code, and you are screwed. Protections are there for both sides. Now if you have less than 1000 users, or say gross income of $1,000,000 or less, you shouldn't be able to be sued. Go over that, and the gloves come off.

[@arcuscerebellumus8797]

I once worked as a hand on a construction site - hammering nails... with a hammer... then I got another job carrying bags of sand, but in my free time at home I continued hammering nails just for fun. Then, one day, I got a call from my previous employer - they're suing me :( What?

[@refrains]

(As a student) Replit definitely has a value proposition in K-12. An online IDE on where you can spin up projects and share them to your instructor is very valuable. Especially if you have restrictive devices such as Chromebooks, Replit is simply plug and play.

[@TheNewton]

yeah "works on my machine" is part of the value proposition for environments as a service

[@Kane0123]

Especially with their recent charge toward a co-pilot clone

[@pikaa-si9ie]

github codespace....?

[@kon-jakub]

The entire drama is the best “open to work” announcement I’ve ever seen.

[@markpozsar5785]

If this was unethical or illegal we would have only one business only for every service. We would have just one bakery, one flowershop, one streaming service etc. There's a lot of businesses that basically sell the same product and the only thing different is the branding. Also isn't it weird how the big scary company is so terrified of a random intern copying them?

[@pookiepats]

that is idiotic to say given the IP is software.

[@crispybatman480]

​@@pookiepatsAh yes, the super unique... >checks notes< website that can write/run code...?

[@adambickford8720]

Absolutely ethical, that's exactly why contracts exist. So this guy is just banned from that entire industry for life? The whims of this jackass? For a commodity offering? Pffft. Given how heavily they were tasking an INTERN they just look really silly crying 'ethics'.

[@darkopz]

Your comment makes me think you didnt watch the entire video and didn’t see what the intern actually did. 🎉

[@ZephrymWOW]

@@darkopz Your comment makes me think you take everything at face value. This is how many companies are made, toxic job turns into screw you idiots I can do it better. Unless he signed a non-compete (no interns are signing these) then he can do whatever he wants with the knowledge in his head. This is exactly how my company got started and sold to Microsoft... where I still work today. This includes known customers, poaching employees, design decisions, and anti-competitive pricing. If you intern and learn react are you barred from ever making a react app again...? No thats stupid and these companies codebases consist of like 80% third party packages in the first place...

[@martinkrauser4029]

@@ZephrymWOW even IF he signed a non-compete, those are typically not enforceable and fail in court.

[@jakubrogacz6829]

@@martinkrauser4029 Because you have to pay them nearly full salary to not be considered targeting their means of earning money.

[@ArsenGaming]

@@darkopz I watched the entire video. The intern wrote a pet project that lets you run code online. He did not copy a single line of code, or "steal" any intellectual property. He simply wrote a project. Yes, he used ideas from replit, because there's no possible way to avoid doing that when you've previously worked on a project, but he did not reveal any trade secrets. Working on a project is not grounds for preventing someone from creating or working on similar, or even identical projects, whether they're monetized or not. It would've been unethical if he copied code, but he didn't.

[@unusedTV]

Intentions definitely affect ethics. Ask people if it's a difference if you hurt someone by accident or on purpose. I guarantee people will say the accident can happen but hurting someone on purpose is clearly unethical. Only with some extreme perspectives like pure utilitarianism you'll look at outcomes only, in practically all other ethical frameworks the intentions are a very important component in the ethical judgment. Your example of "cheating without intention to hurt" doesn't fly because you know the action itself is hurtful. The whole point of trying to do it secretly is because you know it's hurtful, yet you do it anyway.

[@yjlom]

even utilitarianism looks at expected outcomes rather than actual ones

[@TheNewton]

When you break your leg it's unethical to set your leg because it will hurt. If I distract you with a look-over-there so you don't see the set coming is even more unethical. Who knew, today I learned.

[@epajarjestys9981]

@@TheNewton Three absolutely braindead replies to an intelligent comment.

[@bambitsunami4165]

Intentions do matter. Specifically on the topic of "do intentions matter in ethics" in a general sense. Here's an example: Imagine two people at a cafe. Alice and Bob. Alice takes a coffee and leaves, she thought she paid but she did not. Alice stole, but unintentionally, so what she did was NOT unethical. (But it was probably a crime). Now imagine Bob taking coffee and leaving. Bob thought he did not pay (but he did, he just forgot). Bob intended to steal. So what Bob did IS unethical. (But probably not a crime). The only difference is the intention they had. It's true that intentions don't always matter (especially if the well-intentioned person is acting with reckless disregard or without exercising the proper amount of care/caution), but I think the above example makes it clear that (in some cases) intention can matter a lot in ethics.

[@haniffaris8917]

eehhh, you can't prove intentions, so it's not a factor from outside perspective.

[@cyrx-glg-1675]

@@haniffaris8917 First off thats why this is about ethics and not about legality. In ethics intentions absolutely do matter and it does not matter if you can "prove" your intentions. If it can be disproven that those were your intentions that's a different story but until then your word goes. Courts often take into account intentions when making decisions on the severity of punishment and unless they can be disproven or it is shown that your character does not agree with your statements, your word will be accepted.

[@franss22]

Another example is a surgeon trying to save someone in a difficult and easy to mess up operation, and accidentally doing something wrong and killing them, vs an evil surgeon that purposedly does the wrong thing and kills the patient. The actions were the exact same, but clearly one of them is unethical and the other isn't.

[@zperk13]

I would say that Alice accidentally stealing the coffee is ethically wrong, but less ethically wrong purposefully stealing it. The factors were entirely in her control, and as a member of society, she is obligated to make sure she paid and stuff. Although, now I'm reading @franss22 reply, and I'm not sure... because I feel like in some ways the complexity and inherit risk of surgery might make them ethically ok. If the surgery is risky, the patient was fully aware of that and consented... idk... If it was a surgery the surgeon should know they're not qualified for or whatever, then they're ethically in the wrong (though not as much as the evil surgeon of course), but if it was a surgery they're fully qualified for... idk... what was the mistake? As a surgeon in the operating room, you should be held to a higher standard, but also, surgery is very complex thing. How avoidable was the mistake? Did they forget an important step? I'd say they were ethically bound to remember that and is ethically in the wrong. But if they nicked an artery or whatever... idk... how avoidable was that? But also, just because humans make mistakes and stuff, the coffee company should be aware that sometimes people are going to accidentally do stuff like Alice did. Not intending to do something shouldn't absolve you (but should lessen unethicalness), but at the same time, it was a risky surgery, the surgeon is only human, and the patient was made fully aware of the risks... Whose idea was the surgery? Did the patient demand it? If the surgeon suggested it, knowing full well the risks, maybe that would be unethical, but also maybe it's best option for the patient? hmm...

[@bobbobby1624]

@@zperk13 ethics is more of a spectrum, if she just forgot, then yeah its only marginally better than the guy who actively intended to steal the coffee, when you're taking stuff from someone else the obligation is on you to ensure you paid, now if she went to pay and the payment terminal declined but she assumed it had paid, then yeah I would say still bad on her part, if she didn't care to wait to check it said payment successful she is still being lax in her responsibility to ensure she pay, but better than just forgetting to pay and walking off, then there is the tipping point where she taps her card, it says payment successful and she leaves, but the transaction ends up not going through properly she is very much in the ethically fair side of the equation, sure she could be checking her bank statements for every purchase, but that's above and beyond what most people would expect of a customer (with the exception of huge transactions in the thousands of dollars range at that point I would expect the buyer to notice if the transaction didn't clear) ethics is always shades of grey, there is very few black and white cases, honestly in the case of the story this video is covering, I would argue the guy totally not ripping off the idea from a workplace he was working at is on the darker shade of grey side of the spectrum, the idea of suddenly trying to replicate the functions of a platform he worked on, smells of nothing more than a salty ex-worker looking to be a jerk, like if I run a delivery company and hire drivers, I fire one drive because he was causing too many headaches so he decides to start offering free deliveries targeting my customers, sure you could argue that's his right to do so and if he wants to do free deliveries and target my customers its not really illegal, but on the other hand its fairly obvious that his intent was just to get back at me for letting him go, that said if the CEO had just ignored his little game, I doubt he would've kept at it for more than a few months until he found a new job and found someone else to hold a vendetta against, all the CEO did was paint a bigger target on his back and give the guy what he wanted which was attempting to damage his ex-employer

[@SylvanFeanturi]

Prime lost it - he's asking a fricking Twitch chat about ethics XD

[@evergreen-]

Prime: Ethics is not about intentions Deontological ethics: I DO NOT EXIST

[@jeanlasalle2351]

I mean, intentions itself is really a bad metrics. A lot of people have good intentions with very bad outcomes. And good intentions for whom? War could be justified as good intentions for their country and people. There is also qualified immunity which prevents cops from being sued because they supposedly have good intentions. And a bit meta : is deontological ethics ethical ? I mean, can something be ethical irrespective of outcome especially if it harms someone?

[@yeahaddigirl]

Intents behind code being a legal problem gives me heavy distopian vibes. If bro wasn't a prior intern there it shouldn't have been an issue. If you don't use their secret sauce then what's the issue? I don't want to be told what not to code.

[@alfiegordon9013]

Replit doesn't even have a secret sauce tho, is jsut on demand docker containers connected to a xterm.js page

[@somenameidk5278]

@@ControversybutComedy-ev7nh if there was a non compete or NDA it would definitely have been brought up, why are you assuming that is the case?

[@TheNewton]

​@@ControversybutComedy-ev7nh that's no-compete not an NDA, and filled with fallacies. Such things are implied to come with large compensations as it's literally invalidating someones job experience and spent life-time by crippling their ability to work in their chosen industry. Most "non-competes" are unreasonable and thus unenforceable and why even the FTC is moving to ban them until we make them federally illegal. It's patents,trademarks and copyright that have substance, the rest are chest thumping posturing and bad interpretations and abuse of the law.

[@TheNewton]

@@ControversybutComedy-ev7nh " hired intern for your product AA and left then build quite similar concept but say "I don't use your code"" That's part of the risk of startups. In the Docusign example, who do you think they hire, randoms know-nothings off the street or developers that have worked in the document-industry and for competitors. Do you understand the word: poaching. Get a book or take a course on critical thinking.

[@PhantomGanhdi]

@@somenameidk5278what if the intern didn’t fully read the contract that they signed for the internship so they didn’t bring it up because they weren’t aware of it? Yes, there are people who do fully read the contract, but not all interns or employees fully read the contracts that they sign for job offers.

[@disguysn]

It does sound like the CEO realized he had egg on his face and had no legal leg to stand on. The last email from him made his public apology sound hollow.

[@0xCAFEF00D]

It's not an ethics problem to develop competing software at all. There was no requirement not to share any of that stuff. Not even a legally meaningless promise, something that doesn't reach a verbal agreement but is clearly replit and Radon coming to a mutual understanding that he shouldn't compete. That would introduce an ethical problem. But there's nothing to indicate that. But what's truly unethical: letting an ex-intern see supposed company secrets, constrain them in no way, let them develop a product AND THEN come after them legally. It's a clear problem of access to justice that he's needed to pull the project.

[@Epic501]

this

[@maf_aka]

I feel like being on the fence on this situation is an L, the intern clearly posted a lot of evidences and did his research on the CEO's general attitude. the kid sympathized with his previous employer, asked questions about his potential wrongdoings and got his requests denied, and STILL responded calmly with kindness. seriously, how many of us can claim better moral high ground than this intern? besides, what's stopping the CEO (or anyone from Replit) to make clarification post, if they really have compelling evidence of legal wrongdoings? the silence here is deafening.

[@lawrencejob]

Just to address a technicality, in case anyone is interested: Black box (nothing to do with the ones on airplanes) means “with no knowledge of internals” and white box means “with full knowledge of internals”

[@remsee1608]

6:09 “Scientists were worried about how many languages I they can cram into a webApp instead of wondering if their boss was going to sue you them the open source project they were working on”

[@pephathalok]

No, it was not example of good communication. It was example of utter cluelessness about the gravity of the situation: accusations of IP theft have a potential to leave a permanent branding on his name, undermining the rest of his career. Repo takedown, accompanied by apology in writing, makes it much worse: it can (and will, if needed) be interpreted as an admission of guilt. As soon as the word "lawyers" is out, he needed to disengage and find a lawyer for himself immediately, same day. He could play a prince on a high horse after that, by not sending that letter about readyness to spend 20mil on lawyers to the investors,.

[@echtogammut]

The only proper response is to file a public lawsuit for libel. Then take a settlement from that $20 million in venture money. Use a portion of that settlement to create an open source version of their product, published by another developer.

[@chindianajones3742]

This is equal parts big brain/big dick

[@isodoubIet]

I'm sure he'll be happy to spend his last $20 to file the suit

[@dimitar.bogdanov]

Only except it would only be libel if Replit's CEO went to e.g. Twitter (sorry, X) and posted about how Riju (or whatever it's called) is making a clone of his product. If I come to you and tell you personally that you're making a clone of KZbin I'd likely be unconditionally wrong, but that doesn't just mean you can sue me.

[@nxfoobarbaz]

The CEO is an expert in "white box" and "black box" clonning therminology, because somewhere in his heart he know that he runs a clone.

[@brightsausage4851]

"You worked at my sweater factory a year ago, so it's unethical for you to make sweaters for your esty page"

[@shroomer3867]

"You worked as a chef at my restauraunt, so you are forbidden from cooking food for yourself or others ever again"

[@TechnologyEnjoyer]

I don't know if this exists already, but there should be an open-source legal organization whose sole purpose is to defend open-source projects from bullying and harassment. So much of technical infrastructure is based on the collaborative effort of thousands doing work for no compensation and these private companies rely on these projects to make money and many don't contribute back and instead some even go out of their way to sue these tiny projects.

[@ra2enjoyer708]

Well it does exist and it's called Free Software Foundation, but writing (A)GPL code (instead of a typical MIT communism) will make a typical open source connoisseur blacklisted in Big Tech companies anyway.

[@softbread1728]

"open source legal organization" eh? Open Source is a term for software, maybe you mean non-profit pro bono organization?

[@TechnologyEnjoyer]

@@ra2enjoyer708 I'm describing more of a legal aid organization that devs can request assistance from. FSF has a licensing arm that enforces compliance of its license but I'm more referring to something like Software Freedom Law Center, which I found out after commenting. But, even that organization is focused on license compliance. A dev or team who is being sued or told to take down their open source project should have an legal aid organization they can reach out to to request legal representation at little or no cost.

[@testacals]

@@ra2enjoyer708 Wait why would GPL get you banned from the industry ??

[@Waitwhat469]

27:00 is why I push for my projects to just be opensource from day one if I can help it. I hate redoing work and would rather be able to use it somewhere else if I had to move around.

It is really strange even questioning if it was unethical. Try a different perspective: You work for a gaming company, leave the company to build your own game. How is that unethical? You are paid for the work you did, that is how a job works. You can take off and do whatever you want later. Don't steal trade secrets and you are fine

[@SandraWantsCoke]

it's unethical if you build the exact same game maybe

@@SandraWantsCoke do you really think a company 'owns' the future work of a employee? If the employers are building something unique , it is their responsibility to put a non-compete clause on their employment contracts. Also, anyone can build a similar game play, regardless of being a former employee or not (just look into the amount of metroid-vanias out there)

[@damoates]

I think a deep dive into the evolution of the legalities of software development, from ~40 years ago (IBM v Eagle or Apple v Franklin) to modern concerns of software license pollution would be an interesting topic. The old ideas of clean room development aren't entirely reasonable in a world with Github and Stack Exchange.

[@gavintantleff]

I’m a high school student who is forced to use a school chrome book, and they are very locked down so we are not able to use the Linux feature. Until recently, replit was the only way for me to code while I was at school (and boy was it miserable I hate that website). However now I use a tool called Coder on my server at home so I can access vs on my chrome book when I’m out and about

[@SandraWantsCoke]

Who paid for those Chrome Books? Don't they cost more than a linux laptop?

[@gavintantleff]

@@SandraWantsCoke I don’t know, but this is for an entire district of kids, K-12, so I think they wanted something that just works

[@SandraWantsCoke]

​@@gavintantleff I'm pretty sure the result was that they bought something that was expensive and didn't work. Nevermind you're probably not at the age where you understand my question. But whenever a large sums of money are involved and "they", which is often the government, buy things for you they will always end up buying what you don't need and always pay too much for it. And when it comes to governments, they usually buy them from their friends so they and their friends take your money (which is tax money when it's government). I don't understand why (at my school also, which was a long time ago) we didn't just use Linux. Linux is amazing. And you can install it on any old mac or pc laptop.

[@ahdog8]

Tysm for the tip, I was really interested in setting up my own replit-like personal server

[@gavintantleff]

@@SandraWantsCoke look, as someone who actually was in the district, they worked fine. All of our online schoolwork was on some Google drive tool, which work perfectly fine on chromebooks, so they were very effective for their purpose. Additionally, they had very long battery life, so I can usually go two school days without charging (like if I forgot to charge). Overall, I’d say they chose the tool for the job. Sometimes you have to make trade offs.

[@EddyVinck]

TheArcheologistAgen back at it digging through historial artifacts. Also, love how the bottom of the post says the project is back up, but the link doesn't work 😂 Glad they didn't have to shut down their project though!

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

hah, they self shutdown :)

[@rocstar3000]

On the github project, the author said that the infra broke or something like that, and basically, he'll need to rewrite a lot of things, that was like a year ago so he probably don't have time to do so, or thats harder that he thought.

[@Cvar00]

@@darkopzHe's still committing to Riju (last commit of his was on August 2023) so I doubt that's the case.

[@raxod502]

Just FYI - Riju is still online and the link does work! You just might be on a network that doesn't support IPv6. Due to the recent changes by AWS to increase the price of IPv4 networking, and given that Riju operates at a massive loss, I decided to go IPv6-only.

[@ArsenGaming]

@@darkopz What line? Nothing he did was unethical or immoral in the least.

[@IARRCSim]

10:03 "people who worked on the designs are feeling kind of shitty" Someone not liking a design wouldn't be a surprise unless the company is overly worried about hurting people's feelings. A healthy workplace would let people be harshly honest and critical of their own and each other's work because being honest about problems leads to solutions and improvements.

[@RoyaltyInTraining.]

11:46 How could we as a species have gone so wrong that responding to a threat in a normal way will get you in huge legal trouble? Edit: Okay, 24:08 makes me even more mad. I'm ready to just write off the entire foundations of our legal system at this point

[@t3dotgg]

FWIW, I have been involved enough with people cited here that I can confidently say Amjad is massively in the wrong. Dude needs to calm his ego. He’s improved a bit over the years but nowhere near enough 😅

[@davidbuckley4904]

I've been teaching high school CS for 5 years. Sites like Replit are awesome for my use case and back in 2018 when I started teaching, education was their specific market that they were hoping to tap in to (they've since branched out to broader use cases). The ability to share a 20 line python demo program with my students as a link, have them fork the project into their own account, modify it, and send me back a link is about as good of a workflow as it gets with 15 year olds who struggle thinking, let alone coding. That said, the CEO crossed the line here.

[@godeketime]

Patent infringement does not require access (that is a gate for copyright and trade secrets), independent inventions are owned by the “first to file” (assuming it is granted) and everyone else loses.

[@TJackson736]

Trade secrets are not patents and are not filed because they are secrets. Posting them online, like in replit's blog posts, makes them no longer secrets.

[@KnightMirkoYo]

"Huge conflict of interest" as if "we are a large VC-funded company" and "you are a free OS project", both of which just happen to run code in the browser. Lol

[@_nske]

Till now I had never heard of Replit. I'm not sure for how long I'll remember what the company is about, but I'm pretty sure the words "small peepee energy" will for ever emerge in my head when I hear that name. Sorry Replit, blame ThePrimeagen

[@theohallenius8882]

Question remains whether he had a non-compete clause in his internship contract, because if he did I can see how he could lose a lawsuit, but if he didn't, and he left the company to work on his open source "clone", it's perfectly normal and a lot of people create better alternatives. Some of his public comments tho could have put him in legal jeopardy, like "I will not be copying more stuff" is like implying and admitted you have already copied some stuff. So main takeaway here - re-read your emails 3 times before sending them.

[@Waitwhat469]

even non-compete are null in some jurisdictions

[@TijmenZwaan]

He did not say "I will not be copying more stuff". According to the intern, that was a mis-quote by the CEO, which according to him does not correctly reflect what he actually said.

[@TheNewton]

good luck get a judge to side with a non-compete against an intern. Such clauses are entirely unreasonable and unenforceable legal hand waving scare tactics.

[@thecompl33tnoob]

Non-competes are unenforceable. There is no judge who will say that someone cannot work if they don't work for the previous company anymore. Furthermore, the FTC passed a rule that Will be in place this year that says that nearly every form of noncompete is null and void.

[@keborgan]

By that logic if I work for gamedev company, I can't start my own project.

[@dealloc]

Yes this is perfectly valid. It depends on your contract. These are things you have to consider when signing a contract and working for a company, while doing similar same things in your free time. Always talk with your employer about it or seek legal advice in worst case scenarios.

[@keborgan]

@@dealloc Of course it depends on the contract, but good luck enforcing it if employee is not getting compensated for non-competition clause (at least where I live). Also, I wouldn't trust employer interpretation of the contract - unless you can prove it. In case of doubts I wouldn't take a contract if employer would like non-competition clause without stating it plainly and paying for it. I skipped one contract because they had clause that any project I work on in my spare time is property of the company (nice try).

[@jakubrogacz6829]

@@keborgan Oh we had that one in Poland too, company is known for having a pharaoh ego level dude and in general ancient Egypt approach to workers ( aka slaves ), luckily dude left this earth and I am considering throwing a party, thing is, noone does pay for NDAs so they are all invalid anyway, trying to get authorone to relinquish rights to all other projects probably is also unenforcable as anyone would see this as overreach and in general IT as it is should be based on licences not job agreements anyway so companies pull of borderline illegal stuff anyway as they should list authors in credits and don't

[@theondono]

If anyone is tempted to say it’s unethical, they should better be ready to call out *lots* of big open source projects like Android for being unethical

[@dealloc]

Android is an entirely different story, in that it used to be proprietary OS for digital cameras, before pivoting to other handheld devices, failing to attract investors. Google acquired it and made Android what it is today, as an open source project.

[@theondono]

@@dealloc that doesn’t change the fact that some of the biggest Android contributors have been from the iOS team at Apple. It’s not uncommon for people to use open source projects to explore good ideas they had that their job won’t allow them to explore.

[@CTimmerman]

Non-compete clauses can be overruled if it's the only thing you do. An AI specialist can't be stopped doing AI after being poached by a rival company.

[@tpotts77]

Let’s use example. Amazon prime, Netflix, the one billion spin-offs. Fair use requires providing a different source code and functionality. Not a different concept. If that were the case movies, songs would never be created. Don’t let conglomerate use fear to bully you. Take it as sign they liked and want to steal idea.

[@nexovec]

Commit names as puns on competing commercial products are nothing unusual in hobby projects. Pretending like that's somehow evidence of stealing IP is just beyond ridiculous, unless he literally went and copied their codebase in that commit.

[@davidlloyd1526]

To be fair, you probably shouldn't do an Open Source clone of a product from a company that previously employed you. It may (or may not) be legal, but it'll look weird on your CV. Just pick anything else in the world to work on.

[@NickSteffen]

I’m not sure how it can be considered unethical. If you work at a chain grocery store and then open your own and use the same business practices, no one would think of calling it unethical. Unless he’s literally copying code it’s not unethical. Interning at a company does not preclude you from working in that field again because of ethics…

[@ruukinen]

This, probably a fairly large portion of all companies ever started are because a former employee of bagel bakery x got tired of not being listened to and decided they and their homies can set up a better bagel bakery using some of the same methods bakery x uses but implementing the ideas that were rejected in their own bakery y project. If your secret sauce is this piss easy to replicate, you ain't got no secret sauce. It's just thousand island dressing with different ratios.

[@exhaustedrose]

Sounds like we should all build replit clones to stand up to the man

[@claudiogofe]

If only one guy was able to shake a company this much by creating something similar to what they offer, as a side project, that's Open Source and also not commercial... it just says more about the simplicity of the company's leading product than it says about the poor guy.

[@AlexCouch65]

I think the example of going from Netflix to KZbin is a great example cause that's a technology used to create a product. I don't think one person who has experience with that technology should never be able to work on multiple projects which use the same technology.

[@shy-watcher]

27:10 Retyping from memory is also dangerous. Wasn't there a practice of splitting development into a "dirty" team (who read the code and describe it in English but never write code), and "clean" team (who develop based on the description but never look at the original) for some specific situations where code is available and functionality needs to be copied, but the code can't be used?

[@1DwtEaUn]

that is usually reserved for when doing reverse engineering, so they can't say you just copied code X directly.

[@michaelutech4786]

Conclusion: What replit or any employer could complain about is two things: (1) the employee stole what they were payed for to produce, (2) they published trade secrets. If replit found verbatim code copies that are specific enough, then (1) might be a thing. That's hard to evaluate without looking at both code bases. But looking at the screenshots of riju, I can hardly imagine that there is a lot of code behind it that could be copied and there is probably not a lot that exceeds api usage. There will be monaco or something and some pty/xterm stuff and probably a docker and then the stuff will be hacked together. If you did that once or saw it done and then do it again, it will look very similar. But a trade secret? I don't see that. The argument that replit's value proposition is actually the integration, collaboration and scalability features sounds very convincing to me. Intentions are not relevant in a legal context, but they are relevant on the ethical side (which I don't see is an issue anyway, see last comment).

[@shannenmr]

Since he provided them a link to the full code and commit history I feel like if they had a leg to stand on it would have been reasonably easy for them to have have published a counter article and not let him re-publish it.

[@holzcartoonz9962]

Intention absolutly matters in a legal context. The prime example is the difference between Murder and manslaughter. And intention can also affect sentencing. At least it does in germany, were the law normally defines punishment for crimes in a spectrum. Let's say starting with a fine up to x years of jail time, depending on the dimensions of the crime, if you're a repeat offender, the circumstances and intent. And i'm pretty sure, it's the same in th US, as one of the jobs of the judge is to determine the sentencing.

[@michaelutech4786]

@@holzcartoonz9962 Intention matters in some legal contexts, mainly where a certain intention either determines the legality or the severity of an action. But generally, intention is not relevant in the context in which I used it. You get fined whether or not you knew that you were speeding/stealing/leaking if this is what you objectively did. Murder is a special case because the intention is what defines murder and distinguishes it from various other forms of killing, many of which are or can be legal (when you are acting in self defense, working as a soldier on the battle field, etc.). There is a lot of confusion about that in the USA. For example whether Trump actually believed that he lost the election. That might well be relevant for some of the conspiracy charges he faces, but it's not generally relevant for the criminality of the vast majority of his misdeeds. Otherwise Snowden would not be a Russian citizen today. The situation in Germany is very different from the US, even though there the intention is even less prevalent. It's a proverbial principle that ignorance does not protect you from prosecution. Judges in Germany have much more autonomy and discretion than in the US and the prosecution has the obligation to prosecute crimes (which it doesn't in the US) and there are no juries. All of that put together makes it very difficult to compare the two situations, but the impact of intentions on the determination of the legality of actions is actually pretty much the same: It's minimal unless it's part of the definition of the offense, Intentions almost always affect the severity of penalties though - unless the state makes a living on these penalties (speeding/parking).

[@TheHTMLCode]

So I’m no longer a user of replit. Major small PP energy from its founder, I can’t even imagine what sort of culture there is internally if this is how they treat a passion project from a past intern

[@knolljo]

isn’t the main question if it is legal to work on the same thing you worked on at another company? would love to see this case solved by a lawyer!

[@astronemir]

California says yes. Many other places say no

[@johnbell1810]

depends on the contract and NDA signed by employees and contractors.

[@knolljo]

@@astronemir Yes, I also remember signing something called a non-competition clause, which only bans you for some time from the same profession and if it is a commercial product

[@darkopz]

It really depends on the contract and state like others said. What you can’t do is memorize the code then re-write it verbatim and try to release it as open source.

[@Cvar00]

Never sign non-competes. Companies have no right compromising your right to work after the professional relationship is over.

[@ChungusTheLarge]

Lol the irony. Has this CEO ever heard of Project Juypyter? According to Amjad's logic, Replit is a closed-source copycat of Jupyterlab. What a chump

[@TheNewton]

@ThePrimeTimeagen 2:57 "why would you pay for it" not everyone needs to be the town blacksmith. Big value in minimizing the works-on-my-machine problem. Environment-as-a-service is a near circular venn-diagram with "why use docker/containerization/virtualization". We can either sacrifice time making and fiddling with tools or doing things with those tools.

[@anonymous_person_smith]

Did he intern in the State of California and produce this project on his own time and resources? People leave companies and build tools inspired by their experiences all the time.

[@pixelheartsoftware]

I wanted to make and sell open source games. I made one, and one of many reasons it felt like hell was the fact that it was Open Source... I can't easily use assets I buy in open source project. I have to somehow remove them from the repository if I want to publish the code. So I had to handcraft every asset or read every license to check if I can actually put a font or a piece of sound effect into my source code. There were multiple occasions where I saw an asset bundle perfect for my game, that used a license that forbid me to publish the asset pack. The only choice, if you want to use bought assets, is to distribute a separate fork of your code without those assets. But in most cases there is no easy option to handle it elegantly. In Unity most of the times you import assets straight into your code and have to commit them. Why cant it be like a key in some repository, a dependency that would be downloaded and cached locally at build time? And really, what's the point of such an open source distribution without half of the assets? :D We obviously have no legal and technological framework to handle and promote opensource software. But why? Is it because it's not profitable to create such frameworks? Or because it's impossible and open source just doesn't work?

[@jakubrogacz6829]

But it can, both in Unity ( I'd be honestly more concerned with using that engine about the installation fee drama ), and in custom engine. In fact that is what a game engine is, you'd just make engine and assets and scripts, then opensource maybe scripts and engine but distribute game with assets as a paid product.

[@tsalVlog]

one quibble with the "intent" bit - it _does_ matter in ethical questions when the intent is specifically about actions taken - meaning, he didn't hide it, because he didn't believe it was a copy; that's ethical behavior. If he did intend it, and hid the actions as a result, that's unethical behavior. Your comparison with pre-meditation with murder falls short in that his statement of intent is about unethical or ethical actions, not guilt or innocence. He admits to the action, and his intention does, in fact, change the ethics of his actions. That he did not intend to take unethical actions (copying things surreptitiously) means, quite literally, his actions were ethical.

[@0oShwavyo0]

If this was an open source project, it was presumably hosted on a public platform like GitHub with a dmca takedown policy. Why did they not invoke that policy and be done with it?

[@rushyscoper1651]

they accused him of trade secret not DMCA. their code most likely look like other projects code its unwise to open that can of worm on their asses.

[@boman987]

A “secret” and a “Trade Secret” are two very different things.

[@patrikburda]

EU Law: In the Member States of the EU, as in most other countries, there is a rule whereby software as such (not geared to an industrial application and not constituting a technical contribution to it) is not patentable. It benefits from protection through copyright, just like a literary work. So you can't copy paste and probably not even retype word for word from memory. But ideas and design choices can't be patented nor copyrighted. Just live in EU - skill issue.

[@Veptis]

I have seen a PR that asked to remove examples which were copied with a CC-BY-NC-SA-3.0 license. And it did get merged (I think they wanted to use the library as a dependency in some Linux distro or something). Yesterday I added examples with a similar license to an open source repository that is BSD. So technically, their BSD clause is no longer valid and the CC license is violated. I didn't mention it and there were other examples with the same source too. Replit also trained and shared some language models on code, but from the metrics I was developing... They didn't do any great. To a degree what I work on is similar. You run glsl in the browser. Well, not online but just in your browser: Shadertoy.

[@StrengthOfADragon13]

He was using "no intent to compete" to speak to "not replicating the important features to be a valid competitor" which would make it not enough of a "copycat" to be unethical

[@laughingvampire7555]

yes, everyone makes mistakes and is able to learn from them, some more successful than others, my problem with this case is that to me is obvious he is not genuinely acknowledging the mistake he is just acting to save his company like the CEO of a company of custom computers who in Twitch streaming he said BS about a small streamer who had won according to his rules but he changed the rules on the fly and lead to the company going bankrupt, he apologize after he denied the reward and became public, JayzTwoCents & LTT talk about and Jayz gave her a pc with all she needed for her streaming. Artesian Builds was the company, this drama was a year ago. So at least for me I will continue to avoid replit

[@nekomakhea9440]

"thing that runs code in a browser" is so riddled with prior art that any lawsuit trying to claim IP rights over the idea is never going anywhere. Hacker rank and so forth have all been around for years.

[@franciscokloganb]

Me working on side projects as often brough many benefits to companies I worked on. It is not uncommon for me to face a problem, and go onto a side project and just copy-pasta a bunch of code I developed independently into the company applications and have shit working out of the box in 15m instead of re-implementing it. So, why should I not take inspiration from company code on other projects down the line? As long as it is not for profit or not a pure "Hey I cloned your repository, and relaunched this SaaS as my own", I see no problem at all. At the end of the day, _In computer engineering, nothing is created, everything is copy-pasted._

[@stringyGG]

0:20 - Wow the 2023 Tech-X-Tuber improv was amazing.

[@quelchx]

In my contract if I wanted to leave my company -- replicate what they do or similar and sell it -- I have to wait 3 years legally or something.

[@SandraWantsCoke]

I should have patented the toilet. Imagine suing everyone who's using one.

[@martijn3151]

Lawyers; people that cannot create anything themselves, aside from misery

[@erwinalejandrosolanosoliz3060]

I used it to teach programming concepts remotely. It is collaborative, and you can showcase an example in different languages for comparison, and what is important; with zero installation on either end (teacher or student).

[@SpaceShot]

There's a lot of value in these things for education. Many students have Chromebooks and platforms like these just work.

[@pepkin88]

Interesting, the Riju page domain has only AAAA records, no A records, that's why the page doesn't work over IPv4, but does over IPv6. Also that's why there were split reports about whether the page is up or not at 46:23.

[@jabthejewboy]

My intro to programming class in college used replit. It’s very convenient and requires very little setup.

[@blackoutgo2597]

A boss from a previous company was mega paranoid about people stealing the companies code. They didn't do anything special, and i wouldn't want it if it was free. It was dumb

[@resting-uk7zb]

Am I missing something? Didn't the article mention that Replit asked him to open source his work for them? So anything they could complain about is already public domain?

[@baglayan]

Open source doesn't mean free to use. Licenses exist for all software, open source ones are not exception.

[@obake6290]

If I understood correctly, they wanted him to opensource the part he was working on - the package management. Not the core functionality.

[@softbread1728]

What the kid did WITHOUT a doubt is unethical, and I think anyone with any seniority in the tech industry, specially software, would/should agree. His only save-grace was the poor behavior and unprofessional-ism from Replit's CEO that acted like a power abusing douche. Let me be very clear, this type of behavior IS IN FACT actionable (meaning that legal action can be taken against it), and very likely the intern would've lost (specially considering the top notch lawyers Replit can hire). Do not pull this type of behavior if you want to have a good relationship with previous employers and have strong connections.

[@softbread1728]

To get into more details, the kid was even unable to properly defend his project in a postmortem article. One of the initial claims by the CEO was that the project (Riju) was a clone using very similar designs, the kid's defense? 1. There are tons of other clones out there! (How is that even an argument) 2. I used design from Replit's public blogs (Proves even more it's a clone) On top of that, having a commit that says "Repl. it superiority" and his only argument is: " from my third day of coding, when I’d just added all 38 languages that Replit supported, before moving onto the 178 other languages I wanted to add" .... that's not... even an argument. To sum up, you used design from the company you were an intern in, you created a product that has the identical functionality of the company you were an intern in, and you added FIRSTLY the 38 languages the company you were an intern in had and purposely named it "Repl. it superiority", yeah.... good luck convincing a judge that you named your product that while assuring it's NOT a clone of Repl. it It would be highly naive to think there was nothing unethical about those set of events, almost the same level of naiveness that this kid had when he expected a good response form his previous employers. Let me make something clear, Replit could've easily sued and most likely would've won based on the evidence. In the end, what saved this kid is that Replit preferred to save face in the situation to diminish public scrutiny for the behavior of the CEO instead of suing the kid that would've gained them nothing other than showing an ex-internet that unethical behaviors should be punished. Do not pull this kind of bs people.

[@virno69420]

Yeah you just strawmanned his defense. Kid would win, easily.

[@JustAGuyLinux]

I think there are two questions. 1. Is it ethical? 2. Is it actionable by the company? Not sure.

[@zeachco]

Rookie mistake were made in his blog post and mails (he incriminated himself a little), it's often a question of phrasing indeed. ie: "but then I tried to remix Replit itself" should have been "but then I tried to remix a popular sandbox idea which Replit used as well" which seems to also better replicate the actual situation

[@SourceOfViews]

I genuinly cannot understand any reason as to why this would be unethical.

[@0xTas]

We're so far into late-stage capitalism that people are intuitively beginning to treat companies like people 😢

[@attilazimler1614]

At point two, the guy eluded to the part of the question that even if Replit published the repository, there is still a license attached to it and the answer depends on that license. But I'm assuming if they published it on GitHub, they probably done it under some kind of open source license. Still the actual correct answer "it depends". Number 3 is also it depends - on the contract that you had as an intern.

[@MagnusAnand]

The CEO, Amjad Masad, worked at Codecademy, which provided online editors and interpreters. We could argue that he stole Codecademy ideas to build Replit…

[@tXJwu005JORffQs30mQKJRnT]

I first started programming on replit on middle school Chromebooks. What a disapointment.

[@hey_im_him]

Why should a kid be held to a higher ethical standard than the company? Are we about to pretend that these for profit companies are ethical?! 😂

[@daexion]

From the sound of the email send to Radon, it sounded like little more than a SLAP lawsuit because Replit knew he couldn't afford an attorney and if he tried to defend himself, he'd go into debt doing so.

[@thisbridgehascables]

Was Radon acting unethical when developing out a similar project as a public or private facing repository on Github? For me this depends on his intent before contacting the other company. One could dismiss his project as an exercise in practice and education, developing skills.. etc. The fact he worked as an intern.. is a little concerning, because he was quite aware of their projects and possible hopes for commercial deployment. My question is why did he even bother to start a conversation?? I don’t really ever communicate with previous employers about development projects for sites to apps. As a professional it’s best to keep personal projects private and not disclose your work.

[@muhwyndham]

It's simple. Radon is young junior dev that proud of his work and want to share, especially to people that he's looking up to. During all of this article I can see that before the whole debacle, Radon maintains good relationship with Replit and it seems like he is on the verge of actually coming back.

[@georgeokello8620]

Guys like Radon at his current stage of work life are very prone to the devious tactics of the corporate world and is too innocent minded to adopt the “cover your ass” mindset which I don’t blame him for given his age. His innocence of the corporate world will vanish and he will eventually know how rough the real corporate world operates.

[@thedog5k]

30:42 of course ethics involves intentions, what a ridiculous statement

[@Thect]

To a certain extent, I do think it is somewhat unethical. But at the same time if the product (commercial or not) ends up being a superior product, I think it’s also a skill issue on the company’s side for failing to apply the same innovations and keeping talented engineers in their team.

[@daraphairphire]

How would I feel if I was trying to manage a company and an OLD intern had taken a single aspect of my project and hammered it into oblivion and then offered it back to me? I'd be fucking stoked, dude offered his free time to help develop the concept and gives it on a shiny open source silver plater. People who are actually for open source and those who just say it, will act very differently when some 'copies' a small part of your project and expands it for no other reason than curiosity.

[@delicious_seabass]

Ethical or not, it doesn't matter. It all comes down to how the law is interpreted by the lawyers and judges. Whether the CEO is a dick or not, also doesn't matter. The naive kid thought it was a good idea to post a public "clone" of the product to the internet, then let the CEO know, just after having interned at the company. Huge rookie mistake. At the end of the day, if they want to sic the lawyers on you, they will, and the only winner in the end is the one left with money in their pockets. Some advice for interns: If you plan to make a clone, A: Don't share it online with everyone to see, B: Don't let the company know you did that.

[@numoru]

Hires intern: heres this bit for you The bit: literally everything the business model relies on

[@iamworstgamer]

yeah bunch of millionaires decide for us lesser scums that what is ethical and what is not

[@pianissimo7121]

W Take from the Prime. I normally dont care too much about your takes nor the stories themselves, I basically watch you because you are "kinda" funny. Is it Ethical or not is a personal opinion, there is a reason the law doesnt punish unethical behavior. Legal threats before even discussing is small pp energy. I dont have as much confidence as this guy does. Cool of him to actually try to communicate, even if he felt threatened.