So what do we do, all fork the repos and upload the source to archive.org?
Two repos:
Fork that shit. Upload the source anywhere you can think. Do crime.
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.
Why would it be illegal? A cease and desist is just a fancy letter saying do what we want or else we’ll go crying to a judge. If the original dev hasn’t done anything wrong (I’m not familiar with the project but I’d still say that’s highly likely to be the case) then there’s nothing to worry about. So make all the clones you want, and watch a dumbass company Streisand itself
“Hey! We were gonna charge a subscription for that! Fuck you for doing it first, competition is not allowed.”
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.
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
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.
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.
Ghetto fork it. GitHub will nuke the forks done via the fork button with the initial DMCA
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
Good news is there is a lot of forks that were made by various users. I have a copy of the source…
Unfortunate news is that development is likely stopping so if they change the API I don’t know if there are any fellas that will come around to fix it…
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.
