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Comment by ping_pong | Hacker News Reader

There was no ethical lines crossed. If you have proof that he copied code from your repo then that is illegal. But if he copied the idea, there's nothing ethically wrong with that. The one who crossed an ethical line is you. You can't protect ideas, only actual code.

What is ethically wrong is bullying a former intern with legal threats. You need to learn this, I guess the hard way.

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Not just legal threats, the whole line about being “the most demanding intern we’ve ever had” was an ad hominem attack that was completely out of line. It was cruel, mean, unnecessary, and unprofessional.

Well even if they was "demanding" behaviour (whatever that even means), there would be no real way for the outside to check if it was true, without relying on the statements of persons involved.

This is why such a statement should have been avoided altogether, especially if the other side seemes to be cooperating.

As much unnecessary such statement was, I could understand it if it was a) true, and b) stood alone in the correspondence. But apparently, he said it just after offering the guy a job (in a way that I read as implying he'd offer him a role of a senior engineer or a manager).

Yeah what was up with that?

It was a tell about this guy's personality.

Many people would say it's ethically wrong to copy an idea. In fact, it is common to see people up in arms on HN about it, when the power dynamic is reversed.

Is Google copying your idea ethically really the same as you copying Googles idea?

If they copy your idea they can literally destroy your existence given their resources, size, visibility, infrastructure, etc. If you copy their idea you first have to make many things better than them before even scratching on their turf.

And before anyone says power dynamics are not relevant in ethics: In my philosophy studies I also studied ethics and yes — power dynamics are very relevant for ethics.

> when the power dynamic is reversed.

I mean, yes, that's definitely the case, isn't it? Punching below your weight is seen as unethical, right? The power dynamic is an important aspect of deciding the ethics of actions.

Most people find it ethically wrong to abuse power and a giant company copying an idea is seen as that. So is threatening a kid because you got $20 million in the bank. Ideas are copied all the time and especially by startups.

> it's ethically wrong to copy an idea

Who says this? Certainly we have intellectual property laws to protect novel, recent, and specific ideas. However, “Running code on another machine” doesn’t seem to meet any of those criteria.

You are blurring the lines now though so we end up with a discussion of where the red line is at. Intellectual property laws are national,so if a South Korean company copy the design of the iPhone they aren't breaking any US IP law (as of course you cannot break a US law outside the US as a non-US citizen). So novel, recent, and specific doesn't really matter unless we are lawyers. But it still gets HN'ers up in arms.

Would very many HN'ers get up in arms about someone copying an iphone? It's not like apple needs more profit.

I guess the only reply I can really give you would be my opinion. So here it is: In my opinion most HN'ers would be up in arms if it were, say, a Chinese company doing something that might possibly maybe be kinda a copy of a design. Though I doubt we would see any arms if it were one of the hundreds of situation where Apple have copied features or design elements. So in short: If a big US company does it it's mostly okay on HN but if a Chinese (or Russian) company does the same it is a bad bad no no. In my opinion.

Not a popular opinion on a mostly US site, I know, but as you can likely guess I'm not American (or Chinese or Russian for that matter).

Almost all ideas are copied in some way. Even if an idea is original, not all of it is. Most successful companies aren’t the first one to offer whatever product they’re offering. Everyone is working with what came before them and building on it. Very few things are wholly unique. There is nothing unethical about it in itself.

The problem is when a large company muscles small ones out unfairly (using their clout, money or lawyers to push competition out).

"These hypocrites will have a different response when the situation is different, just watch."

I’m just curious what racist rant you replied to me!!! :P

Have you ever worked with git? It is obvious the intern has the codebase and the commit history and that is why when he published the new project part of the commit history of replit was on the new project, it is 100% obvious he has copied part of it yes.

What are you talking about? You can’t say that without providing proof, the commit history in his post does not show anything of the sort and the original project is gone from github

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