My non-expert take on this:
Haier claims these plugins cause the firm significant financial damage
Don’t care. Competition is not damage.
violate copyright laws
Prove it.
plug-ins developed by you […] that are in violation of our terms of service
The plug-ins never agreed to your ToS. Better sue your customers instead.
Yeah they have no legal basis for their ridiculous claims and demands. This company is just full of shit.
Hijacking the comment to say: Fork the shit out of this repo immediately. Fuck Haier.
Ghetto fork it. GitHub will nuke the forks done via the fork button with the initial DMCA
Fork it on a different platform - GitLab or something like it - we really should diversify our code repos. Microsoft has too much power with GitHub
I’m sure it exists outside the sphere of my knowledge, but this saga made me wonder if there’s some sort of Git/Bay-type site for software developed in the public interest, but is otherwise belligerent to corporate pressure.
Move that shit to Gitlab and have some of it saved offline for good measure.
Make it like the Barbara Streisand effect but for a FOSS project lol.
I’ll fork it on my forgejo instance
It is likely costing them more from whatever cloud service their platform is hosted on.
But, that’s on them for not putting locks on their api.
If any appliance manufacturer says that accessing your own appliance (that you own) outside their software ecosystem is financially “damaging” to them, they might as well be saying “Hey, just so you know, we’re collecting and selling your data.” If you have already purchased the appliance and their software is free, there is absolutely no other way that using a 3rd-party application could damage their bottom line.
Thanks, Haier, for letting me know never to purchase your products.
The project was accessing Haiers cloud API, not just your appliance. Not that that it makes this any less shitty, but there is a difference. They aren’t saying you aren’t allowed to access a product you own, they are saying you aren’t allowed to access their servers.
Then make the devices able to run offline
Just purchase the ad free premium plus platinum subscription for offline mode, only $12.99 per month!
I just did for my toilet 🚽! Now I’m able to shit remotely if I need to.
Upgrade to the ultra deluxe ad free premium plus platinum subscription for an additional $3.99 per month and you can unlock the remote wipe package too!
Here’s to hoping people start ripping their app apart to call out what information they’re collecting for sale.
Just letting everyone know that GE appliance is also owned by Haire.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Appliances
Besides that, they also own the following brands: Hotpoint (U.S.), Hoover (Europe), Candy, Fisher & Paykel.
I’m so sad about Fisher & Paykel. It was a local (New Zealand) manufacturer that prided itself on quality. It had such a great reputation for quality it eventually took that great quality internationally. And then capitalism and enshittification got its grubby hands on it and turned it into another trash brand. Yet another quality local company disappearing off overseas, screwing over local workers and trashing the quality in favour of profit.
Enshittification exclusively defines online platforms. Stop using it for everything.
It’s a perfectly cromulent word that describes the process that happens across nearly all consumer corporate endeavours, online included.
I disagree and so do others, so you will have to face the fact it will be used in this context going forward.
No sense wasting effort fighting it.
Enshittification is clearest in online, but even Doctorow uses the word to describe the behaviour of all companies.
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
GE Appliances is an American home appliance manufacturer based in Louisville, Kentucky. It has been majority owned by Chinese multinational home appliances company Haier since 2016. It is one of the largest appliance companies in the United States and manufactures appliances under several brands, including GE, GE Profile, Café, Monogram, Haier and Hotpoint (Americas only, European rights held by Whirlpool Corporation). The company also owns FirstBuild, a co-creation community and micro-factory on the University of Louisville’s campus in Louisville, Kentucky. Another FirstBuild location is in South Korea, and a FirstBuild location in India opened its doors in 2019.
“Hey! We were gonna charge a subscription for that! Fuck you for doing it first, competition is not allowed.”
Does homeassistant even charge a subscription?
No, its free an open source, but it out competes their spyware
Home assistant does not, but Haier would rather you use their proprietary SmartAir2 app that vacuums up every tiny bit of personal data for resale, and could potentially turn into a subscription service later.
Mind you smartair2 has a 1.4 star rating on the play store if that tells you how well any of their software and devices work lol
Frigidaire’s is just as bad
I guess literally every modern appliance company is just garbage…
They do, but only if you want to go through their servers for access outside of your network.
I do it mostly to support the project.
IMO, it’s also worth the yearly cost for voice integration with Google Nest/Home or similar devices. Both can be done without paying but it’s so much easier and I know it’ll be supported over time.
I bunch of people have forked the projects on GitHub and changed the README.
https://github.com/Andre0512/hon/network
https://github.com/thempc/hon/commit/f4169cce29fb5a5d669cad627fd6d66e681a5896
https://github.com/fbanwjdmzoasjdn/hoe/commit/70835712ec71086996d47a22b509629ab14c12dd
https://github.com/RearDoor/hon/commit/db2776b1ce3b86aa3ff1e63ebe34999e2df88800
https://github.com/EvilGremlin/hon/commit/263084b46829e00361a26b7cb186303e17128684
https://github.com/abc123me/hon/commit/b4186ad014d73566019cca3ba7422cb09cde5ec9
https://github.com/mon5termatt/hon/commit/5b40cf6947c95c1ea9b0c5b214be0520c32f829a
https://github.com/cathalferris/fuck_you_haier/commit/d896e02bb6d4b188192a7c60fb7e2f6b17c0a14cThe mistake is forking and hosting it on GitHub. If Haier sends GitHub a DMCA takedown notice, they will comply, and the forks will be deleted too. Use other hosting services for redundancy and keep a local copy.
Might put it on torrents as well.
I don’t think there’s a copyright component to this. DMCA isn’t on the table
Haier were implying that they might sue if the developer didn’t take it down
Good point. Nothing in the article explicitly states that it’s a copyright claim, but they do mention “protecting… [their] intellectual property”. In any case, it’s always easier for the website host to fold to cover their own asses than to continue hosting the content.
The letter from haier says it is a beach of TOS. It’s directly a “take it down or we’ll delete your account” letter
Awesome! This is why I love the Lemmy community.
I don’t use Haier products but a similar thing happened with Chamberlain when they blocked the MyQ integration even though it was using the legitimate API and not breaking any rules. No attempt to work with anyone in the HA community at all, just shut everything down.
On one hand, this means projects like Home Assistant are getting popular enough to have enough usage to effect these companies. So that’s great! In the long term, we’ll all figure out solutions, but in the short term it feels like an increasing fight between corporate and open-source control over smart devices.
Just here to leave the daily reminder that API reimplementation may constitute fair use under certain circumstances.
deleted by creator
makes their product easier to use and to be used however we see fit
Haier: You can’t do that!
Corporations and their shitty proprietary cloud services…
So what do we do, all fork the repos and upload the source to archive.org?
Doesn’t sound like a bad plan
Two repos:
Fork that shit. Upload the source anywhere you can think. Do crime.
Let’s hear Barbara SING!
That would be illegal, and you should absolutely not do that. Just like you shouldn’t clone the invidious repos just in case (/s)
It may or may not be illegal, they’re just throwing their weight around under the suggestion that it’s illegal. Knowing well that a single dev working on a plugin in their freetime isn’t likely to want to invest in legal proceedings.
Which is even more reason to do the above, to stick it to them.
Streisand Effect this bitch.
yeah. just because they say so doesn’t mean that it’s actually illegal. they all always like to throw those legal threats anywhere they see fit.
Why would it be illegal? A cease and desist is just a fancy letter saying do what we want or else we’ll go crying to a judge. If the original dev hasn’t done anything wrong (I’m not familiar with the project but I’d still say that’s highly likely to be the case) then there’s nothing to worry about. So make all the clones you want, and watch a dumbass company Streisand itself
Yes i know, it is why I am telling you NOT to do it. Nope. Don’t do it. At all.
If I were the dev, I’d want to either comply or get a lawyer, and getting a lawyer is expensive.
I haven’t seen any notice, sounds legal to me.
It wouldn’t be illegal if you hosted it in a country where there is no law against such a thing, and/or Haier does not have any presence which would grant them legal standing. Is anyone running a server farm in Sealand yet?
Contacted :)
There’s so many issues with all the smart/IOT devices that it’s just not worth getting into. Few if any manufacturers offer proper, open integrations and when it comes to home appliance there are more important features than that. Just get up to turn off your AC, that’s still the best solution.
Getting up to turn on or off the aircon doesn’t allow for turning it on to make the house the right temperature by the time you get home
My heat pump has a timer setting. I can tell it when to start heating water or when to start AC. If your weekly schedule doesn’t vary widely it should be enough. I have it set up to heat the water during the nigh and heat up my apartment a little bit right before I get out of bed. I never needed anything more.
The Lennox s30 integration works pretty great. It hits a local api hosted on the thermostat, and my thermostat is blocked from internet access.
The first thing I do when researching a new electronic thing is to search “[brand] home assistant” to see if there is already an integration for their stuff. If not, I usually keep looking.
That is one ugly ass building. It looks like it’s swelling from long term water damage.
Last Haier appliance I had was a heap of shit anyway so no great loss avoiding their garbage in the future.
I was under the impression they were dead and gone for about 20 years.
The tv I had 20 years ago was garbage and I assumed they were just some shitty knockoff brand. Surprises me that they own GE.
Last thing I had was a dishwasher by them a couple of years ago. Seals leaked about 6 months out of warranty and it cost about as much as a new one to replace them.
Good news is there is a lot of forks that were made by various users. I have a copy of the source…
Unfortunate news is that development is likely stopping so if they change the API I don’t know if there are any fellas that will come around to fix it…
Usually, the open source community finds a solution for everything
Just build a bomb and fight back fuck them
