I definitely agree the CEO could've handled this better, in a way that wouldn't bring the Streisand effect down on him. But I also don't fault him for being suspicious when a former intern creates something that seemingly uses the same ideas and concepts that the intern directly worked on while at Replit. Even if the author's assertions (about not using any proprietary knowledge gained as an intern) are all 100% true — the CEO is supposed to take those claims at face value?

Also, the author's full email [0] doesn't do him many favors; for a discussion of a project that purportedly consists completely of open-source and public ideas, there are a ton of redactions. Like:

> "You're right that the existence of ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ was initially brought to my attention by my work at Repl.it. But then again, it also shows up on lists of popular ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ for JavaScript."

I'm not a lawyer, but I simply just would not have written that first sentence. Hopefully ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ is something like "React.js", and the author is just being overly zealous in the light of Replit's legal threats.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/OaEOwu2