homeassistant
Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io
Oh no. At least there's no way for everyone in the world to make a backup before it goes dark...
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.
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.
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.
TIL General Electric Appliances, Hoover, Fisher & Paykel, Aqua, Hotpoint, Leader, and Candy are all owned by the same company.
Sad, isn’t it? For fun, look up Whirlpool, Albertsons, and Kroger on Wikipedia to see all the brands they own. No wonder prices are high when so much competition has been eliminated.
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.
I was happy to see earlier, 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
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
Dude has a good heart, that's for sure. I hope Haier sees the light.
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....
You know what that means, soldiers. Clone, clone, clone the repo, far and wide, online and offline. Fuck 'em. Give them the PirateBay whackamole treatment.
For your convenience, from the article:
https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn
https://github.com/Andre0512/hon
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.
I’m lazy, can you share your email so I can send a copy?
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.
They're not gonna DRM the compressor, are they?
Please don't give them ideas.
It's what was done for Panasonic ACs: https://www.espthings.io/index.php/2023/09/02/esphome-panasonic-climate-interface/
I'm sure somebody will take a really close look at Haier ACs now.
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?
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.
"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.
Loss of 3rd party data sales from the tracking embedded in their apps would be my guess.
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.
Same.
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?
Specifically, the plug-ins are using our services in an unauthorized manner
By plug-ins, you mean your customers?
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?
I just used their Feedback form to tell them what a shitty practice that is and that I will never use their products again.
When will companies learn that you don't fuck with developers.
eh, another one for the blacklist... it's getting difficult.
Who is on the allow list in terms of appliances like washing machines?
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.