Haier hits Home Assistant plugin dev with takedown notice

thecookingsenpai@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 237 points –
bleepingcomputer.com

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10904853

cross-posted from: https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/567593

Haier hits Home Assistant plugin dev with takedown notice

I'm not really big on "let's make a movement", but this independent dev has been hit with a cease-and-desist from making a FOSS Home Assistant addon for their Haier air conditioners.

Haier claims that they are losing out on millions of dollars due to this plugin which... lets you control their air conditions from home assistant. They haven't bothered to explain how that's possibly worth millions of dollars - they're just claiming it.

So of course they hit the Streisand button and are demanding that he takes it down. He of course is complying... in a couple of days. Maybe you see where this is going.

It would be an absolute shame if any of you just happened to create a fork, or clone the code, or mirror it in your own instance. An absolute shame.

Just so everyone here knows which repositories NOT to clone or fork, here are the two links:

and please, don't repost this anywhere, or share it in other communities, or anything like that. It's a shame that so many people already know and are making clones. I'm just letting you know so you don't do anything like telling others who may make their own copies.

(sidenote: Haier owns GE Appliance, so for our American folks it may affect you folks too)

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If Haier is claiming that the integration is causing them financial harm it means that their app is collecting your private data and they are selling it.

I think what's funnier about this is that most home assistant users make purchasing choices based on support in home assistant. So anyone that bought one of their units and used it in home assistant would have just bought something else without the support in home assistant being there.

As a result I would think they actually made more money from having that plugin existing.

This was posted yesterday about 15:00 GMT, by 20:00 GMT the github repo had been forked almost 1000 times.

Fuck off Haier

My man Louis Rossman did a video on this. Its on YouTube and odysee

My man Louis Rossman needs to take a chill-pill and get some sleep. Dudes heart isn't going to last very long. Let someone else take the reigns for a while.

Dudes so stressed his eyebrows are going bald.

The dark circles around his eyes tell me he doesn't sleep.

He explains in one of the videos that he went to the doctor about it and was told he is fine and just looks like that.

Lmao "doctor what's wrong with me?"

"Sorry bro you just look weird"

I have a similar issue. Dark circles under my eyes no matter how much sleep I get. Wearing glasses does a good job hiding it though, thankfully.

He's a multi millionaire and doing charitable work and running a business. What do you expect? Some people are build for stuff like this hence hes his own boss. He can do 9-5 but he chose not to #respect

Good Timing - I had to choose between Panasonic and Haier AC, now i will happily avoid Haier/Candy/Hoover/GE Appl. I hope they get a lesson

3 days ago they had ~30 forks. It's over 1500 now.

please, don't make a local copy of the repo and/or forks out of github. It'd make it difficult to retake their intellectual property, and nobody wants that.

Not a lawyer; would this likely stand up in court? Obviously I wouldn't risk it were I the dev, but just curious.

That isn't clear, but probably not. Though if you are a dev there are some open source charities that exist to defend against things like this, so I'd recommend you go look for one.

No pale idea, i hope it goes well for the dev but i think he is ok if he takes it down

That's ok. Andre0513 has forked the repo and will be continuing its development.

Wtf is up with that building in the picture it's lumpy and ribbed