[tmotwu]

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.

[Aeolun]

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.

[catgary]

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.

[mindcrime]

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...

[tmotwu]

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.