[moosebear847]

As a thought experiment, if you ran a business, and all your ex-employees released a free version of the same product, would you be cool with this? Could you hang out with them, smile and say everything is totally cool?

Or would you want to ask them to not release free versions of your paid product?

[ghosty141]

Why should people leave your company and start something new if they are happy in their position right now?

Most of the time, this kind of "exodus" happens because the business somehow mismanaged their employees which resulted in them not being happy, leaving the business and opening up a new one.

Even then, if I knew my business would be superior, I wouldn't mind that much. In the case of repl.it I don't see any reason why Riju would pose even the tiniest threat. It's super basic with no obvious plans to be compete with repl.it. Just look at the polish of both products, one is a serious business with funding secured while the other one is a small OS web-app written by somebody in their free time.

[moosebear847]

There is a small (to your point, pretty small) risk that it could be used in place of repl.it or inspire other competitors. If this was done by an outsider, this would be totally fine and healthy for consumers.

However, this is someone that the business helped out. One would hope that the person would reciprocate with positive value for the business, rather than negative value in the form of risk.

If you are interested I wrote another response alluding to the golden rule in a reply close by: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27431326

[xenihn]

>As a thought experiment, if you ran a business, and all your ex-employees released a free version of the same product, would you be cool with this? Could you hang out with them, smile and say everything is totally cool?

I've actually seen this exact situation play out twice (except the new products were not free), though I wasn't directly involved. Both times, it only happened because the business owner was, to put it bluntly, a bad person who had no business (heh) running a company, and the result was a mass exodus that birthed a direct competitor.

To answer your thought experiment:

I am looking at this as an employee, as a controlled person. You are looking at it as a founder, owner, or some other type of position that holds power. A controller.

Those with power would view it as immoral. An action like this threatens their power. Those who have enough power to exert a controlling influence, want, above all else, to maintain that power, while also increasing it. Anything that impedes that is unfair, and thus immoral.

Those without power, or with less power, do not see it as immoral, because it is a redistribution of power to those who deserve it just as much, if not more. It is fair. It is just. It is moral.

You see this as immoral because your sympathies lie with those who have power. Might makes right. The states that enforce non-competes have the same view as you, but California does not, and that is one of the many reasons that it remains the global center of technological innovation.

[moosebear847]

Rather than looking at it from the view of an employee or founder with power, I am attempting to view it through the lens of a good relationship between two people, with this being mainly defined through the golden rule - treating others as one wants to be treated.

It would seem to me that if I hadn't chosen to train and work with this person, he probably wouldn't have chosen this exact product to release out of all the possibilities in the world.

Let's say that he had an innate inclination for this exact product and would have done it even if he hadn't worked for me. Even then, he wouldn't have been privvy to the various and more detailed information that you are exposed to as an insider.

Going forward, I would be wary of any information I share with this person, given that it could work against me. This would definitely harm our relationship, and I would wish that this person would not do this to me.

If this were a fishing village, and the main thing to do around here was fishing, I would understand. There's not much choice there. But given that there are many different things this person could have worked on besides my exact product, my reaction would be, 'really man?'

[xenihn]

Does your interpretation of the golden rule involve browbeating with unfounded legal threats that wouldn't stand up in court?

[moosebear847]

That legal threat was not a good response. I think both sides messed up here.

It seems like the ex-intern made an honest mistake especially given his age. This isn't exactly the same but Helen Keller messed up and plagiarised when she was young before. People do dumb things, especially when they're young.

[gilrain]

"As a thought experiment"

=

"The actual situation is indefensible, so let's argue a situation of my choosing which is."

[moosebear847]

The thought experiment is meant to take the situtation to the logical extreme, something that is unlikely to happen yet still realistically possible, in order to more clearly understand the effects of the behavior.

E.g. one guy littering isn't so big a deal, but it's clearer that littering is bad if everyone does it because the planet will get filthy fast.