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Comment by amasad | Hacker News Reader

Repl.it founder here. Happy to answer questions. But also I'd like to point out that this is not the only "universal" project we're working on. See:

- Prybar: Universal REPL interface https://github.com/replit/prybar

- Polygott: Universal docker image for all languages (we support) https://github.com/replit/polygott

Between these three you'd be able to add your favorite language to Repl.it (patches welcome). We have a write up on how to do that using elisp as an example: https://repl.it/site/blog/elisp

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As a regular user and promoter of REPL.it, I like it very much and therefore submitted two PR’s [1][2] after seeing a blog post about how to contribute to it [3].

Unfortunately, those PR’s have been lingering up there for the past 4 months without any meaningful feedback. I fully understand that you are a business and therefore there are priorities but it would be great to get any kind of feedback on them in order for me proceed with further actions one way or another.

Anyway, thank you for providing such a nice tool for free and open-sourcing it!

[1] https://github.com/replit/polygott/pull/28

[2] https://github.com/replit/prybar/pull/30

[3] https://repl.it/site/blog/elisp

Hey Salam, thanks for your PRs, definitely appreciated. I'll figure out what's the hold up -- I'm sure there is a reason -- and I'll make sure to get back to you

Wow, that's very cool.

I'm curious though, won't open sourcing all of these make it much easier for competitors to catch up to your head start in these areas? I wonder what your risk/reward thinking is wrt deciding what to open source.

(NOTE: I'm not associated with repl.it)

It might make it easier for competitors to catch up. It might also turn some who might have become competitors into collaborators.

Sure it well. We have a lot of copycats as well. But as Elon Musk likes to say: the only moat that matters is the continuous pace of innovation and the value of open-source outwieghs any contrived barrier to entry.

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