[mindcrime]

amasad is a regular HN'er who's very active in all posts related to repl.it.

Until, curiously enough, today...

My guess is, his "top lawyers" and other advisors gave him instructions which amounted to - in layman's terms - "Dude, STFU."

Edit: disregard, he did show up and start commenting here.

[contravariant]

A wise man knows when to remain silent.

Not that that's stopped Amjad from commenting anyway: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27428400.

[dsissitka]

He's just avoiding it. He retweeted this:

https://twitter.com/pnegahdar/status/1402018604233732098

And tweeted this:

https://twitter.com/amasad/status/1401957368510906369

[pcthrowaway]

So based on those tweets, I suspect the following scenario is a possibility, or was perceived as a possibility by Amjad:

Radon interned at repl.it and asked a lot of questions. To be clear, asking a lot of questions is a good thing for career development in that it results in learning a ton, and typically something you definitely want your full-time employees to do, but not necessarily what you're expecting from an internship/temp worker arrangement.

Amjad apparently had some awareness of Radon being a particularly curious intern. Again, nothing wrong with that!

Radon then published an open-source hobby project which seemed to build on many of the teachings from repl.it. Based on what we can see of the discussion, it's likely that Radon wouldn't have had the exposure to the problem domain in order to build the solution he did, as fast as he did, had he not spent time at repl.it and asked a lot of questions.

Radon then showed this to Amjad, and as all of the above dawned on Amjad, he reacted incredibly poorly. The analogy he's using in his tweets ("someone goes into your house and steals from you, even if it's not material") suggests he's likening it to inviting a friend over to a dinner party at your mansion, having the guest ask a bunch of questions about the design, excuse themselves to use the restroom, and poke around in all the closets along the way. Next week they invite you over to the 1-bedroom flat that they regularly livestream from, and you see they've applied lessons they learned while asking questions and wandering around your place, to their interior design.

You don't feel robbed, but you may certainly feel a bit slighted. If you're a private person you might be a bit miffed about how your years of hard work has been distilled into something more spartan and put on display for others to copy.

Even if I think Amjad's response was quite over the top, I do think it's fair to be a bit surprised to learn that your guest spent a significant portion of their visit poking around in your closets instead of focusing on the dinner company. In the context of an internship, it comes across as mildly jarring to point out that you were actually just after interior design lessons rather than enjoying dinner for the sake of dinner.

I'm not proposing this is in reality close to what happened; Radon seems highly motivated and prolific, and was probably an amazing intern. I also don't think he did anything legally in the wrong, even if unconventional and potentially offensive.

Amjad's reaction was totally inappropriate, but based on his tweets there is at least some reason to the rhyme.

[tyingq]

I follow your line of thinking, but what's missing from it is that repl.it isn't unique at it's core. There are a ton of "multi language repls", many of which existed before repl.it, before Amjad's jsConsole, etc.

What repl.it is doing that is unique is the amount of investment into all of the "extra" stuff around it.

The "number of languages" thing isn't secret sauce either...clearly once you have the base repl working, iterating more languages is pretty straightforward.

[ric2b]

Sounds like he just learned about the domain while working for the company, there was no stealing of trade secrets or IP violation.

[munk-a]

Which is extremely wise advice honestly. This lawsuit is a bit muddled and less clear cut than folks have been portraying it. Speaking out in a forum like this may salve your pride but it isn't going to result in absolutely anything that's helpful legally - it can cause only harm.

(And honestly - most HNers would just take the opportunity to bash him if he showed his face, so for his mental health as well I am happy he's keeping to the shadows)