[_shadi]

Someone 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.

[jdjankwkw]

The idea is hardly novel. On top of that, if lines of code were not copied, no foul.

Not only was the CEO being a bully but he was wrong. There is no ethical dilemma here. It happens every day. You are allowed to copy an idea for software. Not the literal code. If he wrote it all himself this should be a non-issue. I also urge you to look at how the CEO “apologized”. I will never use their service for that alone.

[jongjong]

This 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]

> 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

[munchler]

> As I said the legality of this is not so simple to answer … but once you bring IP into this it becomes a lot more complicated, calculus is also about ideas,

From a legal perspective, there is no such thing as “IP”. There are copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. If you want to talk about legalities, you have to start by saying which of those four were violated. “Ideas” alone have no legal protections.

[michaelmrose]

What IP was stolen. If neither you nor the CEO can specify there is none.

[mvc]

You think it's unethical to work at a company and then later create a copy of what the company does. Fairchild Semiconductors would like a quiet moment with you.

Does it still seem unethical if the proposition is inverted? What if a company figures out they no longer need your skills and/or labour. Is it unethical for them to lay you off? What if they actually had to do some work behind your back in order to figure out how to do this?

What do you think about a company that offers people a home for their digital creativity, and then uses that creativity to build technology that makes the skills and network their "users" have acquired over their lives worthless.

You'd expect the users to adapt to the situation, find new skills and get on with their lives right? Which is exactly what replit should do instead of sueing. Apparently they are well funded now so it should be a problem.