cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10882099
Thankfully I don’t use any of their products, but this really pisses me off. They claim that this open source project “causes significant economic harm to their company”
This is ridiculous. It is truly ridiculous. How can something that enables the user to efficiently control their AC cause “significant economic harm”???
Consider forking the repository or mirroring it to another platform like GitLab, Codeberg or your self-hosted Git server, so the project can continue to exist and someone can maybe fork it and maintain it.
The effected repos are: https://github.com/Andre0512/hOn and https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn
If you don’t know about Home Assistant, check it out. It’s an amazing piece of open-source software, that you can run at home on your own server and use it to control your smart home devices. That way, you don’t need to connect them to the manufacturer’s (probably insecure) cloud. It gives you sovereignty over your smart home instead of some proprietary vendor-locked garbage. Check out their website and the Lemmy community: !homeassistant@lemmy.world
I also highly recommend Louis Rossmann’s video about this: https://youtu.be/RcSnd3cyti0
He makes awesome videos in general, consider subscribing.
As Rossmann said, don’t ever buy anything from such a shitty company that doesn’t respect their customers. This move by Haier is nothing other than a slap in the face for everyone, who just wants to comfortably control the product they paid for. This company is actively hostile towards their paying customers. Fuck these bastards!
The developer commented the following:
Luckily I’m insured. I’ve contacted my legal expenses insurance and they’re covering a lawyer for the case. I will seek advice and see how an expert assesses the situation and then proceed.
Tldr, They are going to fight this!
Source: https://github.com/Andre0512/hon/issues/147#issuecomment-1892738060
What sort of insurance is that and do I need to get some?
It’s pretty common for freelance developers to have insurance like this - if I screw up and you get ransonwared, insurance pays for a lawyer to explain the contracts indemnity clause to you using small words
But what if I saved money not talking to a lawyer and never had the client sign an indemnity?
Then don’t screw up
If you have already screwed up, you now get to play The Game of Litigation, where their lawyers try to prove that you are liable for billions of dollars in damages, and your lawyer tries to prove that you aren’t. The way the game works is whoever spends the most on lawyers wins. You’ve got more cash to spend than your clients right?
Not sure if it’s really the freelance/professional thing others mentioned. Private legal expense insurance (Rechtsschutzversicherung) is fairly common in Germany, so might just be that.
The developer is German, in Germany it’s pretty common to have a Rechtsschutzversicherung. You pay them monthly or yearly and in exchange you can request legal advice from one of their lawyers af any time. It’s pretty neat.
Wow, and it is a real lawyer? I e had employers with benefits that sound similar but I think only get things like templates for common documents like wills and contracts that you can get anywhere, or “free” co suits like you can get anywhere.
I actually do phage a upcoming minor legal need this year, and they couldn’t even tell me , using that as an example, what would the benefit cover?
Germany sounds ridiculous with how many insurances you have to waste money and time on.
Imagine being American and not even having health insurance
Imagine being American, having quite expensive health insurance, then discovering your insurance doesn’t cover any of your basic healthcare needs.
Not getting the downvotes, a lot of those are quite stupid. The Rechtsschutz is basically required if you drive for example, only because of game theory, not because it actually brings anything
It’s just reddit group think, sadly we didn’t leave that behind.
I’ve got them disabled on my instance anyway so I don’t even see it. As far as I know everyone likes my posts because I only see upvotes.
You don’t have to, but if you do you may have the ability to stand up against a company trying to shut down your open source project…
Or you could just hire a consultant when you need it?
$200 once in your life vs 396 a year, is kinda a no brainer situation.
Most professions where action/inaction can result in damages will have similar insurance. Some insurance firms even specialize in coverage for professionals.
If your profession has an association or similar group, they should be able to help you find those firms if they exist.
My guess is someone saw what was being built and said “hey, we can build something similar and sell it”, hence the C&D.
Still a ridiculous move. If I buy an appliance, I pay for it and I own it. I am allowed to do with it whatever I want. If I want to use my own solution for controlling it, hosted on my own server, I should have every right to do so. Fuck corporations and their shitty cloud solutions.
To be clear, I think the company are idiotic in the way they handled this, but I guess the integration probably hooked into the company’s cloud-based services - so their servers.
Bad enough if a air conditioner needs cloud access for smart functions and doesn’t have a local api.
I don’t disagree.
Absolutely. I’ll never buy a device like that if I can’t use a local API! I have no IoT devices and refuse, because they sketch me out.
Except instead of something similar, it’s always something way, way worse.
The Apple iOS method. See a great app or product on your platform. If they won’t sell it or want to much Apple just makes their own version and prohibits the original.
This is actually a thing and is called Sherlocking: https://thehustle.co/sherlocking-explained/
Apple is so notorious at doing this, it’s not even funny anymore. The article didn’t mention these two famous sherlocking cases though:
The EU really needs to start doing something about this kind of shit.
The US does too, but fat chance of that happening.
When asked for a statement, the company answered “Yes we’re idiots, and wanted everyone to know”
@SharkAttak @Dehydrated way to ensure all internet searches on your brand deliver a “not compatible with stuff” impression to all prospective customers.
Sadly, I know them as one company that makes dirt cheap TVs, so they’ll still keep making money.
Cheaper than TCL?
I almost certain you’re being sarcastic, but please tell me I’m wrong. If that quote is actually true, that would be fucking hilarious!
Better yet, make an example out of Haier. Prove to companies everywhere that allowing open source compatibility can only be good for them.
Let’s prove to companies that hostility towards open source can be really bad for them
How long until they start banning you from using thermostats made by other companies
I’d like to thank Haier for their transparency. ♥️
Don’t discount the economic loss they experience from not being able to harvest and sell your data (even possible in the EU, though harder of course)
Well that’s even worse and it’s the reason we need local, self-hosted open source alternatives like Home Assistant.
Hard agree
I sent them a nasty gram from their contacts page. I don’t own anything from them right now but you can damn well bet I will avoid them if when/if it comes up.
I pointed them to Louis’ video also
I assume a zero chance of any purchases is a larger economic hit than allowing a small diy community to interact with their PURCHASED and OWNED product.
I didn’t go nasty, but did do my bit to point out how short sighted this move was:
I just wanted to say that your silly take down notice on the Home Assistant developer, who was enabling greater satisfaction for customers who bought your products, was a perfect example of the Streisand effect in action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Thanks to you, I (who didn’t own - and now probably never will - any of your products), am not only aware of your silly, unethical, and pointless behaviour, but have now taken steps to preserve the developer’s code for future use.
You could’ve fostered this innovation, and gained yourselves the admiration of global, active and thriving community of like-minded people. And potentially gained more paying customers in the process.
Instead, you have achieved the opposite. Well done.
It won’t make a lick of difference, but hopefully they get the same sentiment enough times that they at least understand what a fuck-up this was, on their part.
Edit: at least I know they got it
Nasty was probably strong word. I mostly expressed my disappointment and that I would steer clear going forward. And that would have a stronger economic impact on their bottom dollar.
Yeah - they need to hear this a lot. They could absolutely have taken a little time to understand what need the dev was filling here. Ultimately, this could’ve been a free kick for them, had they handled it the right way.
Any idea what the consequence is if the author instead transferred ownership entirely to an owner based in a country that would give no fucks about a lawsuit? Sure, the OG owner loses the project but would he avoid culpability?
Anyone that wants to take the legal heat can just fork the projects and continue hosting it. I don’t blame the original developer for not wanting to deal with it, even if the legal threat sounds very ridiculous (a project like this would be the opposite of financial harm, how many of us check if something works with home assistant before buying a device?).
In this case the owner actually has legal insurance and is fighting it.
Kinda like how VLC is based out of France because there’s no software patents?
Is there a list of these takedowns? I know Mazda NA is another company that has killed a HA integration.
I haven’t seen such a list. But GitHub maintains a repo at https://github.com/github/dmca with all the DMCA notices they receive. And also, fuck Mazda as well for taking down innocent FOSS projects. Simply for this reason, I’m never buying any of their cars. There are enough other car makers on the market.
I was planning to replace a lot of my white goods this year.
This move has 100% eliminated Haier from any of my decisions.Alright. Let’s get the ratgdo guy on this. I’d pre-order a rathvac today.
This is sad to see. I have a hOn device which I recently connected to WiFi to see what features it would have. Sadly it had to connect to the internet to work so I didn’t play with it too much. I checked this plug-in out then and was hoping I could use it.
You probably can still use it. Just don’t ever update the appliance because they will probably do something to break to api on purpose.
Looking at their twitter this is haier Europe and haier US doesn’t block home assistant at all. I assume these repos are specific to haier Europe though.
