Comment by tmotwu
5 years ago
I am not sure I agree. The topic of intellectual property and trade secrets in software, or if IP laws should even apply, is probably another discussion entirely. However, there's no reason to trivialize it to cutthroat copy and pasted code. If Radon was a state actor, I am unsure HN would be responding the same way here.
Obviously, knowledge learned from mistakes or design discussions from one's time at another company is no issue. The intern seemed to have worked on a project very limited in scope to the overall product (package management). It is quite possible the bells and whistles that Replit's CEO is claiming that is copied are taken from design documents made by someone else - which is not at all learnings from working around a particular domain. In my opinion, this might actually be problematic. I don't think Radon was being malicious here, but you might also want to consider that Radon is a fresh graduate and might not have fully considered the implications of where it is acceptable for him to draw designs from.
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.
> 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?
Why does it have to be in this tone? It's honestly even worse because it would put himself on a pedestal.
If he was truly worried he could simply have a conversation about said worry. You are just reframing to a different threat.
There isn’t a lot of value in a “good reference” from someone with a bad character.
On the other hand, What has Amjad lost today in terms of personal reputation?
Can’t say I agree with your assessment of who’s finished the day with a net loss.
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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.
I'll concede that it's a fuzzy line at times. But nothing I've heard so far here strikes me as justifying a belief that this case falls into "obviously theft of some kind of IP" category. OTOH, I'm biased as I am not generally a fan of the idea of "IP" in general, so there's that...
Yea, we may never know. If Replit just went ahead and filed a lawsuit and presented their case in front of an actual court, that would shed light on the legitimacy of their claims. Some posters has offered to help pay for his defense. Optics would still be pretty bad since no intern should go through that. But a little better since there would be a lot less doubt.
Unfortunately, they must now face the court of public opinion, which has not had the best track record lately.
Exactly.
The HN crowd, in general, is a funny one. Pretty sad, actually.