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.
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
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.
Just purchase the ad free premium plus platinum subscription for offline mode, only $12.99 per month!
“Hey! We were gonna charge a subscription for that! Fuck you for doing it first, competition is not allowed.”
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
The software is free, and you would never need to pay anything to get set up great system for yourself. In addition to that, they also offer a service that you can subscribe to that gives you some benefits. You can replicate all the functions on your own, I believe, but the service makes it extremely simple.
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.
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.
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.
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/d896e02bb6d4b188192a7c60fb7e2f6b17c0a14c
The 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.
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.
