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.
Hijacking the comment to say: Fork the shit out of this repo immediately. Fuck Haier.
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.
“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?
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…
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So what do we do, all fork the repos and upload the source to archive.org?
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.
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Anyone know how the plugin developer responded?
Would be dope if the response was ‘Fuck you, prove it’
e. Well, the response was in the article, big disappointment “gotta take down the plugin”.
It’s haier’s responsibility to prove damages
Would you risk going into massive legal debt for project you make no money from? Or would you continue to develop it for yourself and no longer post it publicly.
Again, it’s the pursuers responsibility to prove damages.
Pro se and wait.
And the dev might have to pay a lawyer to defend himself in court while the company tries to prove their point.
Sure, he might get it back. Maybe. But he also would likely end up in debt defending himself, even if there’s no real merit to the case.
taking pro se forces the company to provide evidence and pay for lawyers while you just wait for their case to build, if they don’t have a case, then there’s no problem, if it gets to trial they have to prove damages, since there aren’t any, that will be difficult to prove.
Taking pro se is not recommended in most situations but in this one, where the damages are entirely made up, taking pro se would not be overly tumultuous
