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: !homeassistant@lemmy.world

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!

  • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comEnglish
    14·
    10 months ago

    I didn’t go nasty, but did do my bit to point out how short sighted this move was:

    I just wanted to say that your silly take down notice on the Home Assistant developer, who was enabling greater satisfaction for customers who bought your products, was a perfect example of the Streisand effect in action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

    Thanks to you, I (who didn’t own - and now probably never will - any of your products), am not only aware of your silly, unethical, and pointless behaviour, but have now taken steps to preserve the developer’s code for future use.

    You could’ve fostered this innovation, and gained yourselves the admiration of global, active and thriving community of like-minded people. And potentially gained more paying customers in the process.

    Instead, you have achieved the opposite. Well done.

    It won’t make a lick of difference, but hopefully they get the same sentiment enough times that they at least understand what a fuck-up this was, on their part.

    Edit: at least I know they got it

    • LifeBandit666@feddit.ukEnglish
      4·
      10 months ago

      I’ve just done the same thing, said I don’t own any of their products but I certainly won’t be buying them in the future and I will be actively discouraging people from buying their products, which will actually hurt their profits, and also put a snide little PS at the bottom saying "Good luck issuing cease and desist notices to the hundreds of forks of the software (803 so far according to another post) which will cost you real money instead of the made up MILLIONS OF DOLLARS that you claim this is open source software is costing you. It’s companies like you that make buying consumer electronics a quagmire

    • dmtalon@infosec.pubEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      Nasty was probably strong word. I mostly expressed my disappointment and that I would steer clear going forward. And that would have a stronger economic impact on their bottom dollar.

      • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        Yeah - they need to hear this a lot. They could absolutely have taken a little time to understand what need the dev was filling here. Ultimately, this could’ve been a free kick for them, had they handled it the right way.