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?
Most home insurers in Western Europe provide with the coverage additional legal counsel / coverage in case someone claims we are liable for anything non motor related. And house insurance itself costs just a couple hundreds a year.
my job has one for about ten bucks a month for employees. covers any need. estate planning, divorce, whatever.
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.
Germany sounds ridiculous with how many insurances you have to waste money and time on.
deleted by creator
Imagine being American and not even having health insurance
In America I just use my buddy Carl. He’s also my doctor.
GitHub also has a legal defense fund for developers. GitHub lists it on their DMCA takedown page.
When GitHub processes a DMCA takedown under our circumvention technology claim review process, we will offer the repository owner a referral to receive independent legal consultation through GitHub’s Developer Defense Fund at no cost to them.
They created this fund after claims were made against a YouTube downloader from a third party. (not Google)
I don’t know if this would be an anti-circumvention claim, but it doesn’t sound like a bad idea to ask.
That’s the same company that has this on their ‘about us’ page:
“Haier company history: since its creation in 1984, the company has been run by the same CEO, Zhang Ruimin, who has always had a clear objective: to build high-quality, reliable products. Within the first year of his appointment, in response to complaints about faulty fridges, his radical action of smashing the fridges with a hammer in front of employees has been recognised as an important cornerstone of the brand.”
I call hypocrisy!
I was planning to replace a lot of my white goods this year.
This move has 100% eliminated Haier from any of my decisions.I am in no way defending their behavior, but API calls will always incur some cost - either in backend resource consumption with “paying” customers, or legitimate costs if they’re relying on AWS infrastructure.
However, like the whole reddit debacle, API usage isn’t always well optimized at the client end, and it can become a negotiation rather than a C&D…unless you’re looking to make a competitor as well.
A few thoughts come to mind… 1) Some of their customers may only be customers because of HA compatibility. 2) HA does not require a cloud API to function - a LAN based solution is usually preferred anyway. 3) There are far more diplomatic ways to approach this issue.
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To think, from a business perspective, that any notable portion of their userbase bought the devices with the explicit expectation that it would work with HA would be naive. We’re hobbyists, a niche market, the less-than-1% of their market evaluations. Losing those customers while reducing whatever burden or cost they’re incurring is probably worth it.
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HA doesn’t - but while I don’t have any Haier equipment to say, the other smart devices in my house which aren’t either esphome or tasmota don’t connect locally to my devices, but to the vendor cloud API. Ecobee, Wyze, Traeger all do that instead.
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Totally agreed. I think AWS API costs are a few cents to the thousand, so a discussion with the developer about the use would be the nice way instead of just kowtowing to the bean counters.
My argument to that would be if we are only a niche segment then where is the serious economic harm they are referring to? It sounds to me like API calls are happening either way but they don’t want to lose out on the ad and customer tracking revenue. Also, I as other have pointed out there is no reason it needs a remote cloud to change the thermostat.
It could be a case of disproportionate impact - consider that forecasting within Haier for their cloud API would probably be based upon X number of units in the field and Y number of average API calls per unit/user/premises. At 40,000 units in the field at 1000 calls per day (which they know because they designed the software, or at least had a hand in resourcing discussions), you have 40,000,000 calls per day.
If you have some third party app which is generating 4,000,000 calls by itself, and you see only 400 users doing this, then it’s a simple high usage target to hit.
Ad revenue, maybe. Tracking is still possible because it’s the same device, and if there’s any security at all, they’ll still have all the native API stuff they’d normally get, temperatures, weather, occupancy, etc.
I will say at a brief glance at the repo for the project that there’s some calls which imply it would get the local IP for the device, and may from there be able to issue calls direct to the device. That would make me think there’s only a few calls to their cloud to establish a relationship and product info, so the disproportionate load theory, barring bugs, doesn’t hold up. While it’s been a good brain exercise, we’ll be left guessing, and hoping Haier decides to be better.
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Better yet, make an example out of Haier. Prove to companies everywhere that allowing open source compatibility can only be good for them.
I literally buy based off Home Assistant support. If it needs to be smart and it’s not supported by home assistant it’s not coming in the house.
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.
How accessible are the WiFi and IR chips inside their TVs? I haven’t tried TCL yet
Honestly I don’t know, why do you ask?
If I buy such a TV, those are the first things I will remove.
Cheaper than TCL?
Eh, same tier, I think.
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!
I extrapolated and condensed based on the company actions.
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)
How long until they start banning you from using thermostats made by other companies
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
I’ve just done the same thing, said I don’t own any of their products but I certainly won’t be buying them in the future and I will be actively discouraging people from buying their products, which will actually hurt their profits, and also put a snide little PS at the bottom saying "Good luck issuing cease and desist notices to the hundreds of forks of the software (803 so far according to another post) which will cost you real money instead of the made up MILLIONS OF DOLLARS that you claim this is open source software is costing you. It’s companies like you that make buying consumer electronics a quagmire
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?
Kinda like how VLC is based out of France because there’s no software patents?
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.
They share a brand for mutual benefit. As far as I’m concerned, they can take the Electrolux and pyrex route and share the mutual pain of the other side being overly capitalist.
Haier & GE in the US can rebrand if they don’t like the attention.
I’m trying to remember which company it was that sued their foreign trademark licensee because the partner chose to use inferior parts. The argument they used was that the partner damaged the global brand. It might not be relevant if the licensor is the one that’s messing up here.
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.
