Project shutdown : can we help?

[Extreme79]

Hi! I'm thinking that we can help the the project to survive and help us to maintain the integration with home assistant alive.

We are a lot of users, and we can massively write to Haier Europe. The project damage Haier? It's a little hilarious.. Anyway.. What do you think about a creation of petition or a common email to Haier?

[KiraPC]

hOn app = free

hOn service = free

hOn cloud = free

Home Assistant = free

Home Assistant hOn integration = free

WHERE IS THE ECONOMIC DAMAGE?

I guess it is API costs related.

[Benniepie]

hOn app = free hOn service = free hOn cloud = free Home Assistant = free Home Assistant hOn integration = free

WHERE IS THE ECONOMIC DAMAGE?

Way too logical!

App = Slow-mo Support for Home Assistant = too much Hassle App should rebrand Hon = Hoff I sense a sponsorship deal or meme or bankruptcy or all 3

In other news I noticed that Reddit has also taken up the gauntlet - Haier trending on the home assistant subreddit which is great.

I contacted a load more Youtubers I follow to spread the word,.

I wonder if any of the tech news/blogs or might be interested in picking up the story. I'm sure a site like TheRegister would enjoy writing up a suitably sarcastic story ridiculing Haier's ineptitude.

Also, Companies like Haier/Hoover/Candy should be published on a Wall of Shame so they can be avoided at all costs.

[Benniepie]

hOn app = free hOn service = free hOn cloud = free Home Assistant = free Home Assistant hOn integration = free WHERE IS THE ECONOMIC DAMAGE?

I guess it is API costs related.

They aren't taking into account the additional sales that a Home Assistant integration generates for the company either.

Not only that but if a customers uses Home assistant then they aren't using the app - same service underneath.

[antonio-fiol]

I am wondering if they're after some "free marketing". All those tweets, videos on youtube, etc. talking about them...

There's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about.

Anyway, retweeted in case that helps.

[Stoatwblr]

I wonder if any of the tech news/blogs or might be interested in picking up the story. I'm sure a site like TheRegister would enjoy writing up a suitably sarcastic story ridiculing Haier's ineptitude.

TheRegister has been aware of it for a few days. I believe that they're working on something, but more people flagging it to news@theregister.com wouldn't hurt

Haier has very few TheRegister stories but what's of interest is this one as it's relevant to what's happening now: https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/13/ge_refrigerator_drm_keeps_turning/

[test2a]

i am not involved with the project and don't own a haier product but i have an interest in these kinds of shakedowns.

my 2 cents.

the community must demand the following things from haier before going any further because it would only cause misunderstanding on both sides.

1. that are in violation of our terms of service.

haier needs to provide details of WHICH clauses of terms of service does this project violate if at all they are accepted in the first place. If they are not accepted in the first place, how would we be in violation?

2. Specifically, the plug-ins are using our services in an unauthorized manner which is causing significant economic harm to our Company.

what is unauthorized manner? , has haier explained authorized/unauthorized manner anywhere in their public documentation ? and also, what significant economic harm is being faced by the company? in terms of dollar figures

3. We take the protection of our intellectual property very seriously and demand that you immediately cease and desist all illegal activities related to the development and distribution of these plug-ins.

in 1 and 2 they say unauthorized use but in 3 they are saying intellectual property protection? when did these projects violate their intellectual property? They need to specifically mention the same before anything else also.

[josephdicarlo1]

Louis Rossmann made a video: https://youtu.be/RcSnd3cyti0

[DisruptionSystemsINC]

Haier don't have a legal leg to stand on in Europe (Article 6 of the EU software directive applies) or the DMCA (Interoperability work is protected)

APIs are not private and Haier are attempting a "prior restraint on trade" (words which will make most regulators prick up their ears and take interest) by way of enforcing vendor lockin

I have flagged this to some tech journalists and suggested they get comment from regulators/EFF

Someone needs to flag this to German regulators - they take this kind of behaviour extremely seriously and will quite happily drag Haier over the coals (I'm outside the EU thanks to Brexit, so can't do it)

Haier have probably just kicked a hornets' nest and are about to reap the consequences

German here, Not sure where i could do that but would Gladly give it a try

[Andre0512]

Louis Rossmann made a video: https://youtu.be/RcSnd3cyti0

I can't believe it 😳

[max06]

Louis brought me here. No owner of Haier products, and for sure never will be one. But I'm a huge fan of free and fair open source, so this behavior pisses me off.

Preparing some mails to be sent to Haier...

You've got that!

[Spirch]

contact louis rossman, he said that you are taking it down, he didnt see this thread or your response

[tloki]

Funnily enough, I was just about to buy their split system AC in hope that I could use HA integration.

Tomorrow my money goes to Toshiba instead, and a part of it to Andre's coffe.

How can we make sure Linus (probably on WAN show?) also spreads this? These companies will never stop doing these kinds of things until we (via the media unfortunatelly) bring it to notice how wrong that is!

[Andre0512]

contact louis rossman, he said that you are taking it down, he didnt see this thread or your response

I've spoken to a lawyer and will probably take it down because I'm still taking a high risk despite having insurance, but I haven't made a final decision yet...

[kevinvangelder]

@Andre0512 You should see if the Electronic Frontier Foundation can help with legal defense.

[fbanwjdmzoasjdn]

Louis Rossmann made a video: https://youtu.be/RcSnd3cyti0

I can't believe it 😳

yeah lmao that's where i came from. signed up specifically for this and nothing else. good luck man, hopefully you won't have to take it down and they'll like rescind or something. sure would be a shame if thousands of people forked the project though... 🤔

[max06]

@Andre0512 I've just noticed you're in germany. Please get in contact with the CCC before taking anything down.

They can't do shit as long as it's only a mail.

[derrickmehaffy]

Starting to get picked up by smaller news agencies: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/haier-hits-home-assistant-plugin-dev-with-takedown-notice/

[LongHairedHacker]

Wow this sucks. I don't own any product by Haier and after reading through the comments here, I'll make sure it stays that way.

@Andre0512 being based in Germany, maybe you want to get in touch with someone at Heise, this sounds like just the kind of story they might be interested in.

[Chryseus]

I suspect they're going to backpedal hard after this negative publicity, in any case I'll be putting it back up the moment it goes down, these scum do not intimidate me.

[Therodoxx]

Heise.de has just been informed. Very good tip!

[Tackyou]

Don't take it down. Your project is not illegal.

[ziceva]

Got here from Louis Rossmann YT video ... I see that people are forking this repo like there is no tomorrow ... Well ... when in Rome ...

[brnl]

Don't take it down. Your project is not illegal.

... says this random dude on the internet. Your claim that the project is not illegal is unsubstantiated without knowledge of local laws and project specifics. It's important to verify the legality in the relevant jurisdiction.

[georgi-doychev]

Last time I checked only courts and judges can say what is illegal or not, the burthen of proof is with heier. Their stupid T&C are not above any law in any country, so the only thing the are left with is this scaremongaring tactic. Anyway, I dont't have any of their products and after this I'll make sure it stays this way for me and anyone I know.

[brnl]

Got here from Louis Rossmann YT video ... I see that people are forking this repo like there is no tomorrow ... Well ... when in Rome ...

I wonder if forking (on GitHub) is enough. If the main project is taken offline due to legal actions, I bet GitHub will take down the forks as well. You can, of course, clone the project and even better host it on another platform.

[ziceva]

I wonder if forking (on GitHub) is enough. If the main project is taken offline due to legal actions, I bet GitHub will take down the forks as well. You can, of course, clone the project and even better host it on another platform.

At least they will have to take it up with GitHub and not a single user ... might be more difficult ... maybe ...

[EvilGremlin]

I forked it with added nice message "Fuck Haier, may their financial bankruptcy match their moral one" They can complain and send threats all they want, i don't care.

[LeoAdamek]

I wonder if forking (on GitHub) is enough. If the main project is taken offline due to legal actions, I bet GitHub will take down the forks as well. You can, of course, clone the project and even better host it on another platform.

At least they will have to take it up with GitHub and not a single user ... might be more difficult ... maybe ...

If Haier had a legitimate claim of the content within this repo violating their IP, or that the software in this repo allowed users of that software to violate their IP, then they would've been best served filing a takedown request with GitHub directly which would also take down all forks.

They've not done this, which suggests there is likely no legal infringement. This repo contains none of Haier's own code, It contains no proprietary technology or algorithms. It contains no trade secrets.

If using this software violates their terms of service, that's not the responsibility of the software author, it's the user of that software.

[QuadCorei8085]

I do not know what they told you but without citing what you did wrong and against what paragraph you really violated you are not in trouble.

They simply want you to intimidate you.

If they still sue you you can sue them back for the time you lost, the effort to going to court and the anger and nerves they caused you.

Secondly they can all accomplish what they want to do via github. If there is a REAL legal issue github will take your repo down.

[EvilGremlin]

Agreed, it's just baseless bullying and github management have a history of standing up against bullies and restoring projects even after actual legal actions.

[DarkwaterV3]

Dutch technology news site tweakers.net has also been informed by multiple readers (I submitted 2 URLS to their system and both were already present in that system) and I expect them to pick up the story as soon as they have time.

Here's hoping Haier gets made an example of.

[leshik]

Just host it on a self-hosted gitlab instance, go anonymous, and tell haier to gfy

[EvilGremlin]

No need to do change hostin yet IMO. Github won't shut such project down just because someone sent stupid angry letter.

[leshik]

Someone needs to fork it anonymously then.

[EvilGremlin]

Hundreds did. Once original repo is down, one of the forks will become new root.

I hope someone will crack actual firmwares so people can do truly independent setup.

[tloki]

You guys and also can also mirror it on gitlab (and make it private as well) just so we can make as much copies of this repo as possible - on gitlab it's fairly easy to do...

[droeloe1818]

contact louis rossman, he said that you are taking it down, he didnt see this thread or your response

I've spoken to a lawyer and will probably take it down because I'm still taking a high risk despite having insurance, but I haven't made a final decision yet...

Please wait until you have another mail / letter from haier. I think they are not going to send you anymore letters or mails.

If they continue this and you don't feel comfortable to continue this project I think everyone understands that you take it down but I hope you just wait a bit to see what happens.

[emlimap]

I hope someone will crack actual firmwares so people can do truly independent setup.

I am hoping the same. The haier washing machine I bought recently, connects to wifi and presents an expressif MAC address, so I guess they use a ESP daughter board inside that in turns communicates with the washing machine main board. You have to explicitly turn on hon and then set the washing program in the app. If you try to use the dials, it will turn off the hon connection. Also, it connects to AWS IOT MQTT. Maybe we can replace the firmware on ESP board with ESPHome or something similar that would grant us full local access.

If it is a separate board, maybe we can replace with our own and then put the original one back should, you need to call Haier for warranty claims.

[l00ps]

https://www.haier.com/global/about-haier/ceo/

In 1985, Zhang Ruimin smashed 76 defective refrigerators in a decisive manner.

This is the guy in charge.

[coinzdude]

I am not a lawyer, but you should be completely in the clear. At most you are consuming exposed APIs and have not infringed on any IP. Even if the APIs were somehow copywritten, which I'm confident they are not, you are only calling them. Wonder if you can get a good IP lawyer to take this on contingency, and if there'd be damages in such a strange scenario.

[l00ps]

Might be worth an e-mail to info@eff.org to see if they're interested in taking the case pro bono.

[HVR88]

Close to 700 forks so far. Don't forget to also fork the python library.

Remember the CSS DVD decryption? You can't put a genie back in a bottle.

[Booplicate]

@Andre0512, not sure if it helps, but you may want to contact github support itself, youtube-dl was able to fight back and win: https://github.blog/2020-11-16-standing-up-for-developers-youtube-dl-is-back/

[tr7zw]

As someone who buys stuff depending on its compatibility with Home Assistant, this is an amazing dumb move by Haier. Saw the video by Louis Rossmann, pretty sure Haier is now getting all the attention that they didn't want it to have, good job guys.

[klemmchr]

Don't take it down. Your project is not illegal.

... says this random dude on the internet. Your claim that the project is not illegal is unsubstantiated without knowledge of local laws and project specifics. It's important to verify the legality in the relevant jurisdiction.

Which is Germany. And here you cannot enforce some bogus ToS, especially not which such vague terms. The only thing they could do is to terminate their services with you. That's it. ToS are basically meaningless if you don't use services from the company. Given that they have been accepted at some point anyways.

[accessiblepixel]

I've downloaded the main branch (download zip), and will upload it somewhere for both the repos and will make links available online. It'll only be static but at least there will be a copy somewhere.

Not sure myself how it would affect them financially (unless this code hammers unauthenticated API requests, communicates any differently from the "proper" app or is based on copyrighted code rather than reverse engineered) since even in this thread I've seen people purchase their devices based on the fact that there's interoperability with Home Assistant...

I mean they could even sponsor the developer and make it an official addon to prove they're not trying to double dip you with a subscription.

Best of luck. <3

[denyago]

Have anyone had a success using IPFS for hosting of anthing? I'm surprised they also allow to host git. Never tried it muself, though.

[YasuArai]

If the repository is deleted, I have posted copies of the hOn and pyhon repositories on my website https://downloads.yukihtml.ru/misc/Andre0512_hOn/

[pawisoon]

Can you please move your code to some self hosted gitlab repo?

[AussieMakerGeek]

I don't see how this could cause 'Significant financial loss', that's a crock. Maybe due to excessive API calls but that would be completely insignificant and almost impossible to separate from legitimate traffic. If anything, they have GAINED from it because of people buying their products BECAUSE of this HA integration.

I have 2 Haier products that I purchased because of the smart capability, however the app insisted 'fine location' be enabled for me to be able to use it. At that point I opted out because I didn't see it as enough of a benefit for them to be able to collect that sort of (unnecessary) information on me.

TBH, i'd much rather see a complete abandonment of the APP/API and work towards a custom firmware for the Expressif chipset that will talk natively to home automation. Ultimately, that's probably what is going to happen now, and then they can't do anything about it.

They could have played nice and worked with consumers/devs to find a compromise but no. Now they will lose sales and existing owners will probably look at hacking the devices and ditch the API all together for a better experience.