Comment by Shicholas
5 years ago
Unpopular opinion, IAAL and frankly Replit has a case that will pass the "motion to dismiss" stage when litigation starts getting expensive b/c of discovery. The OP worked for Replit and therefore had access to private source code or "trade secrets" before creating his project. It'd take expert testimony for the OP to prove in court that his OSS project was not influenced in any way by Replit's closed-source code, which imo is unlikely.
I'm surprised that others don't find mentioning your former company's name in a commit message, for similar software, an admission that you were inspired or thinking of that company's design.
When software is both your hobby and your profession, you have to think carefully about what you mix and how. The developer also goes onto state that what he did is nothing new and he decides what repl.it's IP is on their behalf. Is this hinting that he wrote his new project in a similar way, but he believes it to be nothing special?
Obviously the CEO's response was deplorable, but also probably a lesson to a new developer about mixing work and hobby.
But if source code was copied repl.it could have said "this is our code and their code side to side, spot the difference". Especially given the current (negative) mood that would have won them the public opinion. The fact that they didn't do such a thing suggests to me that they know they don't have a true case. Because if they had, it would be a entirely different discussion by now
In our adversarial judicial system, you really don't have to disclose that until discovery. A lawyer may want to keep some of those similarities "close to the chest" to see how the other side responds first to some discovery requests. (this system is far from perfect).
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lol you don’t know what you’re talking about in the least
Do you?
Please, offer something material as a contibution instead of making fun of other people.
My understanding that it this will probably pass a lawyers sniff test and expert testimony means that developers have to testify that the codebases are different.
even if I don't know what I'm talking about in the least, a judge would still have to assume everything in a pleading is true and imo Repl.it would have done enough to get there w/ trade secret allegations had OP not taken the OSS down.