Appliances giant Haier reportedly issued a takedown notice to a software developer for creating Home Assistant integration plugins for the company's home appliances and releasing them on GitHub.
  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
    83·
    10 months ago

    Amazing. Let’s truly take it from their point of view.

    The only people who care about this plugin are HomeAssistant users, so a very small subset. Those users then either

    A) Already own the product, and thus are not going to cost them anything because they already bought it or B) Home Assistant users who are in the market for their product, and from experience will only buy a product if there’s an HA plugin.

    In what way are they losing “millions” to these 2 groups again?

    I have literally made decisions on purchases like vehicles on if they have a home assistant plugin or not. For HomeAssitant users it’s one of the largest factors.

      • hitmyspot@aussie.zoneEnglish
        162·
        10 months ago

        Yes, but without the plug in, they wouldn’t buy the product to give the data. It’s circulat logic on their part.

          • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            11·
            10 months ago

            that, and I can imagine they fear a giant wave of support tickets from people using HA and having problems

            • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
              16·
              10 months ago

              If they have a good support team they already have a form letter for “you are using this product in an unsupported way” and it takes about 30 seconds to process them.

              • BossDj@lemm.eeEnglish
                16·
                10 months ago

                And let’s be honest, someone with the tech knowhow to set up home assistant isn’t going to ask Haier for help

                • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
                  4·
                  10 months ago

                  Yea I don’t really contact a company unless someone on a forum specifically says that’s the best way to resolve the issue (ex. Account authentication related bugs). Either that or it’s specifically related to my purchase

                  Pretty sure that’s the case for my less tech-savvy friends and family too

        • helenslunch@feddit.nlEnglish
          4·
          10 months ago

          Unless they already bought it and now have to either throw it away or start using the (presumably) shitty app.

          • hitmyspot@aussie.zoneEnglish
            2·
            10 months ago

            The app already exists, so anyone who has it, will keep it.

            Anyone in the market to purchase will now avoid. Their suit will cost more sales than the app, which may have actually generated sales by existing.

            • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              1·
              10 months ago

              …so anyone who has it, will keep it.

              I literally saw someone in a different thread about this earlier talking about ripping out their Liftmaster garage doors when they pulled a similar move last year.

      • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        It depends. My HVAC controller is a similar story to this one, and a dev has put together a plugin for HA that achieves the same thing. But it makes the exact same calls to the cloud service the OEM uses, so I’m certain they’re getting the same usage data from me, regardless of the software means I use to make those calls.

    • dantheclamman@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      6·
      10 months ago

      It is insanely petty. Perhaps they don’t want people reverse engineering their APIs, but all their competitors and threat actors likely do it, just not on a public repo.

    • utopiah@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      10 months ago

      I’m in nearly B as I usually only buy things with proper protocols, e.g Zigbee, that might not need a dedicated plugin. So obviously Haier is now a company I won’t buy anything from and will actively not recommend to anything who cares about my opinion on IoT.

    • helenslunch@feddit.nlEnglish
      24·
      10 months ago

      This is the great thing about FOSS. Someone else will just take the code and reupload it. If they want it removed from GitHub, they can deal with Microsoft. At which point it’ll just be re-uploaded again. There’s nothing illegal about it.

      So Haier suffers the Streisand effect and the people who want to simply continue using it.

      • 1stTime4MeInMCU@mander.xyzEnglish
        18·
        10 months ago

        Right… they claim hosting it is a violation of their TOS, but I’m not one of their customers. How can I violate their TOS if I don’t even use their product.

    • Steve@startrek.websiteEnglish
      7·
      10 months ago

      It would be a shame if 697 people and counting were to fork the project, it would be a real pain to serve each one of them with takedown notices.

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    471·
    10 months ago

    TIL General Electric Appliances, Hoover, Fisher & Paykel, Aqua, Hotpoint, Leader, and Candy are all owned by the same company.

  • deegeese@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    35·
    10 months ago

    Special shout-out to LiftMaster/Chamberlain who did the same rug-pull on their customers last year.

    Never trust free cloud services attached to a paid product.

    • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      21·
      10 months ago

      Their follow-up:

      I have written to Haier to try to get some clarification and perhaps an agreement. I hope Haier will listen to us now that so many people are supporting us. Thank you all!

      Dear Haier team,

      you have probably noticed that my announcement to delete the plugin has met with a lot of displeasure from the community. There are a number of people who bought your appliances not only because of the good price/performance ratio, but also because they can be integrated into home assistant.

      I think it would be helpful to the discussion if you could explain the following questions:

         Please provide details of WHICH clauses of terms of service does this project violate?
   What is an unauthorized manner?  
   What significant economic harm is being faced by the company? (in terms of dollar figures)
   When did these projects violate your intellectual property?

      I’m sorry if some people have gone over the top, but this doesn’t have to escalate and there doesn’t have to be a bad reputation for your brand in the open source community.

      Can we find a common solution here? Can I do something to make the plugins use the API more economically? Should we reduce the polling? I would like to release a new version that uses the API in a way that does not harm your business. You can also consider an official home assistant integration, the home assistant guys would like to get in touch with you for that. This would be a great competitive advantage within the smart home community.

      I hope to get an answer and until then I’ll leave the repos online.

      Andre

      • racemaniac@startrek.websiteEnglish
        41·
        10 months ago

        I love his reply, but i’m afraid history so far has shown that supporting open platforms is not a competitive advantage. The number of hackers like us in the smart home market is negligable. Proper closed platforms rake in the big money, and the public loves it… Add on some cloud integration & a subscription to functionalities that would take a home assistant user not much time to set up, and you’ve got something the average customer seems to want…

        Still a shit (and probably without any real legal basis) attempt by Haier, but if they’re actually aiming at a walled smart home system, from an economical perspective they’re probably right… And i hate that they’re right…

  • billwashere@lemmy.worldEnglish
    24·
    10 months ago

    Not that it likely matters much but I sent them an email saying I would never purchase one of their products based on this anti-consumerism.

  • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comEnglish
    23·
    10 months ago

    “Specifically, the plug-ins are using our services in an unauthorized manner, which is causing significant economic harm to our Company.”

    Presumably, they don’t charge customers extra for hOn, so surely the only people using it via HA are the same people that would otherwise have used their (presumably) shitty app that isn’t meeting the customers’ needs in the first place?

    Not clear on how this causes them “significant” economic harm. Dick move.

    • Windswept@lemmy.worldEnglish
      29·
      10 months ago

      Loss of 3rd party data sales from the tracking embedded in their apps would be my guess.

      • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        Yeah - in an ideal world, the dev would have the means (and legal standing) to challenge this, just to force the fuckers to admit it in court.

        Not that it isn’t written into their ToS somewhere - just would love them to admit exactly how that harms them so much, financially speaking. Shine a light on the whole thing.

    • Rehwyn@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      10 months ago

      The only way I see a company like this having “significant economic harm” from you not using their free app is if 1) they eventually plan to charge a fee to use the app or 2) they profit from data their app collects about you (third party data sales, for example).

      Not something I’m interested in either way, so they’ve lost a potential customer.

      • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        Looking at the brands they already own, it’s not hard to picture a future where they’ll own a brand I want to buy.

        Although, I’m really interested (and haven’t done reading up on hOn yet) - just what level of automation are people looking for on their appliances? I used smart plugs with current measurements, so I can easily get HA to just tell me when my washing machine or dishwasher are finished.

        What else are people doing with hOn in HA?

    • helenslunch@feddit.nlEnglish
      9·
      10 months ago

      Specifically, the plug-ins are using our services in an unauthorized manner

      By plug-ins, you mean your customers?

    • chaospatterns@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      One of the problems with the cloud-polling integrations is that they will frequently poll the back-end APIs to get the current status of that device. A normal user might only open up the app once or twice a day and call the APIs, but these integrations will go 24/7 every 10s-5m. That can add up to a non-trivial amount of traffic. If there’s 100 users opening it up once a day, that’s not a lot of traffic, but 10 users polling every 1 minute is equivalent to 15k people doing something once a day.

      I actually saw one of my integrations I used defaulted to updating every 10 seconds. I decreased that because I didn’t want to draw attention to it.

      A business will look at their usage and ask why there’s more than expected traffic. They could be running their server on a potato. They could go back and support Matter, that costs money, requires skilled engineers, and cuts into profit margins.

      While it sucks, that is something they could point to in a court about “economic harm”.

      • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        I reckon it’s probably not that much. There has to be tens of thousands of customers worldwide that are using their shitty app.

        Forks and stars on the original repo numbered only in the hundreds.

        Cloud services and API gateways usually charge once you get into the millions of requests. Amazon API Gateway doesn’t even charge for having the APIs active - only for the requests that are received and the data transferred out.

        I’m finding it very difficult to believe a few hundred HA users even came close to putting a dent in their cloud bill.

    • leaskovski@kbin.social
      32·
      10 months ago

      Im expecting that HA provides a better experience because it might be hitting their services more than their own app, and they haven’t costed the resources for hosting their service to include those extra requests coming from HA?

      • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Possibly, but we’re talking about appliances here. I know for a fact that my HVAC controller polls their cloud service just as much as my HA does (using a similarly-developed plugin to what we’re talking about here).

        Of course, that could mean it’s doubling the number of times they’re being hit, but I somehow doubt there’s millions of customers doing that - the forks and stars on the repos are only in the hundreds.

        I’m guessing it’s what others here have already said - loss of usage data that they’ve been able to sell.

  • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.ukEnglish
    22·
    10 months ago

    There’s clearly a lot of negative towards the company, which I agree with, but I’m not reading enough positive support for the dev…

    It must be a bit daunting being on the frontline going through this

    I’d guess that anyone using the plugin could help them feel supported in these situations by contributing on their “Buy me a coffee” link…

    https://www.buymeacoffee.com/andre0512

  • notannpc@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    10 months ago

    Based on the verbiage of the threat from haier it kinda sounds like they don’t have a leg to stand on. Short of just the financial cost of fighting this blatantly bullshit lawsuit should they file one. The TOS isn’t the law, so to demand the devs to cease all illegal activities means nothing here.

    Or am I misunderstanding something?

    • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      10 months ago

      You are right, TOS isn’t the law. However businesses will try to trick you with this technique, especially if they don’t think you have any legal support. You can’t commit a crime just because the victim agreed to it, no amount of contracts negate this. Employers often pull this trick to force employees to accept illegal practices.

      The person hosting and publishing the code may have never agreed to the TOS. So can’t be bound by it. They also can revoke their agreement, and no longer have to comply with it. However, continued use of the businesses web services likely requires agreeing to the TOS and this plug in may be using the businesses web services to make the plugin work.

  • 4am@lemm.eeEnglish
    21·
    10 months ago

    Some enterprising engineer should start selling replacement control boards for these units. Like, drop-in, solder-on clones with 100% open source control firmware, linked with an ESP32. Zigbee/Zwave/Wifi+MQTT. I don’t mind, I’ll buy their unit and throw out their shitty controller. They’re not gonna DRM the compressor, are they?

    Hell, if someone does that I’d consider opening a shop where I flip “refurbished” units with the open source board in em.

    • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      An F&P induction range was on our short list for an upcoming replacement to our aging gas range. It is now off the short list. Not sure how many API calls a $8000 range would have paid for, but I’m sure they’ll be happy to know my HA server won’t be pinging them any time soon.

  • Xatix@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    10 months ago

    I just used their Feedback form to tell them what a shitty practice that is and that I will never use their products again.

  • jaschen@lemm.eeEnglish
    111·
    10 months ago

    When will companies learn that you don’t fuck with developers.

    • Maalus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      When it actually backfires. Right now, no company was actually hurt by doing stuff like this - quite the opposite, they get a boost since they close down their ecosystem further forcing people to buy their stuff.

      There will be “boycotts” but in reality it will blow over in two to four weeks, with people forgetting “an outrage” that didn’t reach 99% of their target users at all.

      • Damage@feddit.itEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        Honestly I don’t know. I have a non-smart REX Electrolux washer-dryer combo that’s been working well, but I have no idea what their approach to users is.

        • sabreW4K3@lemmy.tfEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          No worries, just wanted to know who I should be recommending, because I definitely don’t want to support brands that don’t support open technologies.