Appliances giant Haier reportedly issued a takedown notice to a software developer for creating Home Assistant integration plugins for the company's home appliances and releasing them on GitHub.

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)

The Pantser
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Careful I hope this doesn’t spark a war with them going after HA devs to block the use of the code in HA. I know there isn’t much they can do to block it but I would hate the devs having to try to fight a lawsuit.

Naw, once they get their lawyer heads out of their asses, they’ll go directlp to Github and have all of the forks removed.

It’s unofficial and 3rd party, by that logic any OS could be sued.

The Pantser
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I am worried about frivolous suits ones just used to punish people that can’t afford to fight.

You’re right, even if you could win, countless huge companies will steamroll you.

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