I would have been willing to buy that if Amjad wasn’t clearly being a major ass here. He basically prejudiced me to take Radon’s side, regardless of the merits of the argument.
Yeah, I think Amjad would be fully justified in saying “Hey, I’m not comfortable with this. I don’t think keeping that website up is worth throwing away a strong reference from the CEO of a highly funded company - do you?”.
A reference/relationship like that is worth a lot more than a project that is a little sketchy. No matter what happens, I think the intern has taken a net loss from this whole fiasco.
Its not a good way to settle disagreements by making threats as you outline here. I think your suggestion is as bad a way of handling this as the original way. Why not react positively, re-state your intent to hire the intern, say that this is indeed interesting for the company - and because of that - could you please make it not public (against a bonus) and maybe keep working on it inside repl.it.
A reference/relationship like that is worth a lot more than a project that is a little sketchy. No matter what happens, I think the intern has taken a net loss from this whole fiasco.