Comment by jcrites

This is sadly ironic given that Repl.it is largely copying what Cloud9.io (a small company acquired by AWS), as well as a number of other companies already built and launched.

It looks like the history of Cloud9.io's independent website (before it was AWS Cloud9 IDE) is now offline, and not in the Wayback Machine, so I can't link you to it, but you can see plenty of articles about the company in Google Search, some of which have screenshots of what they offered:

https://www.google.com/search?q=startup+cloud9.io

They provided a very similar experience to Repl.it except you had a fully Linux development environment at your disposal, complete with a web-based IDE and terminal, auto-completion, and a suite of sample projects to get started with. Repl.it seemed like a copycat to me when I first learned about it. They don't have the same user experience model, since Cloud9.io required starting up a "workspace" for the language you wanted to use (very fast – instantiating a Docker container on a shared fleet); but close enough that I'd call Repl.it a clone-like competitor of Cloud9.io.

Cloning a competitors isn't inherently bad. If you think you can improve on the user experience that they offer, then that's incremental process. But the hypocrisy of claiming that cloning other companies is wrong while engaging in it yourself rubs me the wrong way.

Radon, if you want to put the GitHub project back up I'll be glad to mirror it and offer to pay for your first $100k in legal fees should you be sued by Repl.it. If the UI that you built is based on a UI that's published on the public company blog then I believe their claims will be tossed out of court pretty quickly.

I'd also encourage you to get touch with the Electronic Freedom Foundation. They they are a nonprofit that may be able/willing to provide legal representation for free.

P.S. Before considering this offer to pay your legal fees final, I'd want to review all previous contracts you've signed with the company, and consult my own lawyers. You seem to live in California which does not enforce non-compete contracts, so their only legal to stand on is that you misappropriated company intellectual property.