> now I guess you're gonna get a lawyer threat letter to take down the whole blogpost because you've revealed private conversations without both parties' consent?

Absent any NDA or other contract, there is nothing requiring the other party’s consent to publish correspondence in the US.

What about option 3) here [1] - this email was initiated by Replit's CEO - so publishing the original email is...bad? [1] https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/3980/is-it-legal-to-...

What is option 3? Nobody numbered anything. If you're talking about copyright, this is obviously fair use.

The comment you are answering to refers to option 3 in the link that they post. It refers to the first answer to the question in that link, the relevant text is:

> 3. Offensive to a Reasonable Person: Publication of the private facts in question must be offensive to a reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities.

The question is about whether it is illegal to publish a private email.

Thanks for doing a better job than me at clarifying my post, I appreciate it!

+1

Finally someone raising the valid point about "it all depends on the legal paperwork signed."

How would an NDA cover corrospondence with an intern from 2 years ago?

It wouldn't

Their silence on this matter speaks volumes. I’ve seen the Replit founders comment on just about every other HN post that pops up regarding their company so it’s quite surprising that they’ve made no comment here. Very curious to hear the other side of the story if there is one.

Here's a glimpse of the other side of the story, a reply from the CEO a few min ago: https://twitter.com/amasad/status/1401957368510906369?s=19

He's implying here that Radon used source code from replit. That's a pretty big claim to make, I'm curious if that's the case.

The post is ambiguous, as "copying it" could also mean "copying the feature after seeing our code".

> As a matter of principle, when someone goes into your home and steals from you, even if it's not material, you have to respond.

That sounds like a a disingenuous way of admitting that he knows he’s lying.

What if you invite them into your home and then 2 years later, you see that they have decorated their house with obvious inspiration from your own home decor?

You have to also factor in the difference in size:

What if you invite them into your home and then 2 years later you see they have decorated their dogs house with obvious inspiration from your own home decor.

If that's what it means, well, seeing the code two years ago is a total non-issue where the setup is so basic and the majority of languages are new ones.

But your interpretation seems way too generous when he compares it to going into your house and stealing from you.

That doesn't seem to make replit look any better.

> There is a difference between copying a feature and actually getting intro a contract, and access to the code, copying it and calling it open-source.

> As a matter of principle, when someone goes into your home and steals from you, even if it's not material, you have to respond.

EDIT: Added quote. The implication seems to be that he thinks source code was stolen and this has nothing to do with design.

I tend to agree. It seems like the author of the article already addressed this accusation [0]. I admittedly am biased in favor of OSS authors but I tend to agree with the points he made there. Namely, this product doesn’t clone any design decisions that aren’t already public. More importantly, Replits differentiator isn’t the ability to run code in browser (which tons of other projects already offer), it’s the polish and support that comes with scaling that idea.

[0] https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/#is-replit-rig...

> copying it

"it" could refers to the feature, not the code. That sentence is clearly ambiguous, the meaning slightly change based on what it refers to.

You are correct, "it" could refer to a feature in the first instance in that sentence, but probably not the second instance (since we don't usually talk about making a feature open source.)

The most coherent interpretation of that sentence is that "it" refers to code in both instances. However, the intent of a sentence is not always the same as it's most coherent interpretation and "it" misuse is a frequent cause of unintentional ambiguity. (That's why I qualified my statement with the "implication seems to be" language.)