Comment by gavinray
5 years ago
Why did you take it down? And why did you apologize?
I think the threat to sue was posturing, the same way that legal charges are always trumped up to get you to accept a plea.
If you had let them see it through, and they intended to sue you, you could have churned up a horror-inducing PR nightmare of a shitstorm for them.
If someone is really as petty to light cash on fire suing a young person with no assets over baseless claims, let them do it.
Litigation is expensive, you could have qualified for a public defender while they burned company assets, or just have represented yourself.
I say this as someone who isn't a stranger to the courts and judicial system.
Unless I was sure the EFF or similar organization was ready to take me on pro bono, I'd do a lot to avoid the Corporate Nuisance Lawsuit Cannon. A fun evening project isn't worth years in court and hundreds of thousands spent on legal fees--and Replit knows this.
Hopefully by publicizing what happened, he might get an offer for legal defense if necessary, then reinstate the project.
> Litigation is expensive, you could have qualified for a public defender while they burned company assets
> I say this as someone who isn't a stranger to the courts and judicial system.
This wouldn't be a criminal case, how are public defenders relevant?
For not being a stranger, you seem sort of unfamiliar with the potential downsides of being involved in legal action, the existence of damages/remedies, etc.
The premise of being sued should be enough to scare most people, whether they are right or wrong. As such it's not surprising.
The email didn't say suing. It just said he was going to talk to his lawyers. Just wait for a cease and desist. If someone can replicate you code and maintain it as an OSS project, there is absolutely no way that wouldn't be the lawyers first step. I'm not shaming him cause that's still scary, but this is a just another CEO thinking they can do what they want.
Defense is a lot more expensive than offense in civil court. Complicated cases like these can be dragged for years and they'd have to pay for it. Intellectual property laws are very in the favor of whomever has the money to throw lawyers around.
Yes, but what would replit gain? Going after such a case would have given them nothing except for some expense.
Dragging random people through court without any meaningful expected outcome sure doesn't seem like something VC's would like to fund. I'm not a VC though. Do they just rubber stamp whatever bullshit behavior from a CEO?
Once it becomes personal, don’t assume economic analysis will have any weight in the decision to continue suing.
VCs give money but they’re not going to micromanage the company unless something becomes a major distraction. Given how much the VC model involves finding things to monetize, I would not expect strong pushback against a claim that they have IP to protect (that’s an asset which the VCs co-own & intend to monetize) and if they have a lawyer on retainer it might not even be much of an expense to pursue early on.
This isn't about what Replit can gain. It's about stifling this before it can ever become something more that a legal threat. Replit is banking on legal pressure to win this for them, because there's likely a nasty PR fallout on the other side of actual litigation.
On the other hand what would such a move get Radon? Amjad seemed to sense that maybe he was fishing for a job. Which to me it seems like he was especially being a new grad. The approach backfired and now he airs the interaction which gets Radon publicity.
We only have one side of the story so it's hard to tell what exactly is going on here.
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Your question about replit assumes the CEO behaves logically.
> you could have qualified for a public defender
In general, that's only for criminal matters. At least, that's what the Sixth Amendment's right to counsel pertains to.
That said, sometimes public defenders are appointed in certain limited non-criminal proceedings, but a case about intellectual property is not one where you'd qualify for a public defender.
>> I say this as someone who isn't a stranger to the courts and judicial system.
I question this is you are saying that welcoming a lawsuit is a good idea for a side project. That could be years of expensive headaches for literately zero gain other than being able to say I get to keep my side project up.
> Why did you take it down? And why did you apologize?
I think taking it down (temporary at first) is prudent in that situation, but I agree about the apology. Don’t apologize unless you agree you have done something wrong.
> Why did you take it down? And why did you apologize?
Probably because he actually did do something that, if not explicitly wrong/illegal, then at the very least on the borderline of being so.
And he has very little to gain by fighting this. He got his clicks and likes already. What would he need to website for?