cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10882099

Thankfully I don’t use any of their products, but this really pisses me off. They claim that this open source project “causes significant economic harm to their company”

This is ridiculous. It is truly ridiculous. How can something that enables the user to efficiently control their AC cause “significant economic harm”???

Consider forking the repository or mirroring it to another platform like GitLab, Codeberg or your self-hosted Git server, so the project can continue to exist and someone can maybe fork it and maintain it.

The effected repos are: https://github.com/Andre0512/hOn and https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn

If you don’t know about Home Assistant, check it out. It’s an amazing piece of open-source software, that you can run at home on your own server and use it to control your smart home devices. That way, you don’t need to connect them to the manufacturer’s (probably insecure) cloud. It gives you sovereignty over your smart home instead of some proprietary vendor-locked garbage. Check out their website and the Lemmy community: [email protected]

I also highly recommend Louis Rossmann’s video about this: https://youtu.be/RcSnd3cyti0

He makes awesome videos in general, consider subscribing.

As Rossmann said, don’t ever buy anything from such a shitty company that doesn’t respect their customers. This move by Haier is nothing other than a slap in the face for everyone, who just wants to comfortably control the product they paid for. This company is actively hostile towards their paying customers. Fuck these bastards!

  • Static_Rocket@lemmy.worldEnglish
    117·
    11 months ago

    significant economic harm to our company

    Oh! I have a solution! Make it a local API you fucking goofs.

    • Damage@feddit.it
      27·
      11 months ago

      I went with Daikin 'cause they had local control… Except that they changed it in the meantime, and I had 2 different AC splits connected to the pump, one of them is older and still has local control, while the other is newer and doesn’t. Fuck all of them.

      • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online
        12·
        11 months ago

        You can make a thermostat with a raspberry pi, a few sensors, and a relay board. They’re pretty simple devices.

        Really, you don’t even need a pi. An ESP8266 would be more than sufficient.

        Source: I made my own thermostat from an esp8266, some sensors, and a relay board.

        • Damage@feddit.it
          7·
          11 months ago

          I did that, for my gas heater.

          AC is more complex, it has fan speed, air direction (2 of them), temperature settings and so on. I solved with an IR blaster, but that’s not what I wanted, I specifically selected this brand to have local control via wifi.

        • frezik@midwest.social
          2·
          11 months ago

          Good enough for a fan, furnace, and AC setup. What we need going forward, though, is something that can intelligently use heat pumps to take into account electrical costs, current rooftop solar generation (if any), and the heat pump’s efficiency ratings in order to most efficiently balance between the heat pump and a regular furnace. Can choose the balance between either cheapest way to run or the least amount of CO2 (which won’t always match up). May also have to consider multi-stage setups where you can run it at low/medium/high levels.

          I don’t think it’s impossible for a FOSS solution to do this, but I don’t think anyone has tackled it, either.

          • kent_ehEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            I don’t think it’s impossible for a FOSS solution to do this, but I don’t think anyone has tackled it, either

            That’s just a software problem. Not all that difficult, assuming the hardware manufacturers don’t lock you into some bullshit locked down proprietary cloud control thing.

    • frezik@midwest.social
      5·
      11 months ago

      Nah, I’d rather data get sent out to external servers and then come back. This is efficient and very smart.

  • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comEnglish
    79·
    11 months ago

    Forked, and mirrored to my Forgejo server. As someone else pointed out on a different community, this is a great example of the Barbra Streisand effect in action.

    People like me, without Haier appliances, are now aware of this fuckwittery, and have actively taken steps to preserve the code, before it gets taken down.

    Dickheads.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
        6·
        11 months ago

        Had a nice TV from that company. It was really long ago, though, and the terribly bright blue indicator of it being on I didn’t like, especially when using as a PC monitor.

    • sparr@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17·
      11 months ago

      And, since we don’t own or use any Haier appliances, we aren’t subject to their TOS.

  • filister@lemmy.world
    54·
    11 months ago

    When companies build shitty software for which they charge arms and legs extra and are pissed that someone found their way around it

  • Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    47·
    11 months ago

    Translation: our legal team has to justify their employment, thus we’re threatening non-profit open source projects that can’t fight back and pose no harm whatsoever to the company’s financials, market position, customers, or any other stakeholder.

    It’d be awesome if the maintainers could get a pro bono advice / representation here to make a proper response. They’re volunteering their free time improving an extensive list of crappy products of a brand and this is what they get back? Disgusting move from Haier.

  • poVoq@slrpnk.net
    441·
    11 months ago

    Seems like I dodged a bullet by recently deciding for another company. Definitely on my permanent do-not-buy list now, thanks for letting us know that you do not want any customers, Haier 😑

  • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
    42·
    11 months ago

    Bit of a tangent, but I hear Haier’s legal department can be reached at [email protected], if anyone has any questions about the legal grounds they’re claiming, I’m sure they’d be happy to elaborate - they clearly have plenty of free time on their hands.

  • erranto@lemmy.world
    28·
    11 months ago

    I always thought about why don’t FOSS projects that are at risk of getting sued by big corp like (NewPipe, Popcorn Time, streamio, tachiyomi …) embrace the dark web or git over torrent via VPN, so their projects don’t get threatened with take downs. z-library ended having to move to the dark web after all.

    • gomp@lemmy.ml
      48·
      11 months ago

      It’s not like a judge said it’s illegal… what happened is that a huge multinational company sent a menacing letter to a developer regarding their hobby project, and the developer —understandably— decided to comply.

      • 4am@lemm.ee
        11·
        11 months ago

        Yeah, even though the claim is 1000% horseshit, it’s not like some small time python dad has the means to defend against a giant multinational in court.

        Laws are only for the common man.

      • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
        9·
        11 months ago

        The developer has not yet fully complied - the repo is still up, they have legal insurance and are in discussion with lawyers, and they have responded requesting clarification on the specifics of their alleged “violation”.

        In the mean time, I think many people have reached out to Haier to express their displeasure. On an unrelated note, the original menacing letter came from [email protected] in case anyone was curious.

  • phx
    11·
    11 months ago

    From what I read, this project does help integrate with HA to avoid using the Haier app, but still uses Haier’s cloud. Can anyone confirm if this was true?

    • MrMcGasion@lemmy.world
      13·
      11 months ago

      Based on the documentation on the GitHub, it looks like it does use Haier’s cloud. Which, doesn’t make Haier’s actions any less shitty, but I can understand a company not wanting a bunch of users using their undocumented API, especially if there’s potential to have automations hitting it more frequently than their own app does (not that I have any reason to believe this project was actually being inefficient with API calls).

      • baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
        5·
        11 months ago

        EDIT: sorry, I read it wrong, I thought the reply says the addon “doesn’t” use the remote API.

        I digged a bit on the code, and every command indeed go through the cloud. So even if you use this addon, Haire can still collect a fair bit of data about you, since there is no way to communicate locally and directly to the AC.

        But the addon only sends the minimum amount of data to achieve functionality, so definitely not as much data as using Haire’s app.

        Can you link to where the documentation that specify they don’t use API?

        Because I am looking at pyhOn (dependency of hon, and also being taken down), it seems like when executing a command, they do contact the cloud. Specefically

        url: str = f"{const.API_URL}/commands/v1/send"
    async with self._hon.post(url, json=data) as response:
        ...

        https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn/blob/327d4a181484d49ccbef25e470cfc86d2c5d91fa/pyhon/connection/api.py#L215 . The call to API is later used to send command:

        result = await self.api.send_command(
                self._appliance,
                self._name,
                params,
                ancillary_params,
                self._category_name,
            )

        https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn/blob/327d4a181484d49ccbef25e470cfc86d2c5d91fa/pyhon/commands.py#L142

        And the API_URL indeed points to a remote API:

        API_URL = "https://api-iot.he.services"

        https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn/blob/327d4a181484d49ccbef25e470cfc86d2c5d91fa/pyhon/const.py#L2

        • phx
          1·
          11 months ago

          Yeah, so I can kinda understand Haier’s position here though they probably could have just set/quoted some ToC’s on using their cloud services.

          It also means that IMO the plugins weren’t offering much other than integration, and this probably would have been a product I’d have avoided even before they started acting like dicks.

          Local control or bust (or ability to reprogrammed with FOSS firmware)