10 mo. ago • 99%

Haier, the air conditioner maker, takes down open source third-party Home Assistant integration

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!

homeassistant @lemmy.world Haier, the air conditioner maker, takes down open source third-party Home Assistant integration

Mildly Infuriating @lemmy.world Haier, the air conditioner maker, takes down open source third-party Home Assistant integration

70 comments

significant economic harm to our company

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

118
- 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.
  
  27
  
  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.
  
  12
- My manager once asked me if I could code in API
  
  8
  
  It depends if it's in the cloud or not
  
  -1
- Nah, I'd rather data get sent out to external servers and then come back. This is efficient and very smart.
  
  5
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.

79
- Seconded, and added Haier to my mental list of companies to never buy from.
  
  28
  
  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.
  
  6
- And, since we don't own or use any Haier appliances, we aren't subject to their TOS.
  
  17
When companies build shitty software for which they charge arms and legs extra and are pissed that someone found their way around it

54
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.

47
- EFF.org would have lawyers, that I hope would take up the case to help the original repo maintainer out..
  
  26
Bit of a tangent, but I hear Haier's legal department can be reached at cybergovernance@haier-europe.com, 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.

43
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 😑

43
- Do you use any smart home solution with your AC? Maybe even Home Assistant? Just curious
  
  7
  
  Not the person you asked, but i have a mitsubishi electric heatpump, which i have hooked up to homeassistant via an esphome library. It has a header on the controller board that you can connect to.
  
  Normally the header is for their $200 controller and app, i spent $10 on the parts.
  
  https://github.com/geoffdavis/esphome-mitsubishiheatpump
  
  I think i better start mirroring the repo...
  
  17
  
  I'm running a Venstar Colortouch thermostat. They're not cheap, but they have a local API and there's a Homeassistant integration.
  
  3
  
  I have a Lennox multistage system with a heat pump, and furnace for when it gets too cold. The best way to run those (according to the installer) is at a low level all the time. So it doesn't benefit much from things like location tracking to turn the system up or down while we're out. Especially since I work from home.
  
  What it does do is make graphs for tracking how it runs the heat pump and furnace each day.
  
  3
  
  I use a BroadLink infrared blaster, as you can control all sorts of devices with Home Assistant that use infrared remotes: https://www.amazon.com.au/Broadlink-RM4-pro-Automation-Assistant/dp/B086VBXSDH?th=1
  
  2
Wouldn't be a bad idea for potential customers to write Haier and let them know they're on a personal blacklist.

Is there an OSS-hostile list, like the opposite of the Awesome-XYZ lists?

40
- https://codeberg.org/QazCetelic/OSS-Blacklist
  
  21
- Someone really should maintain a list like that, hosted on multiple non big tech git hosts.
  
  This recent Anti-FOSS propaganda needs to stop
  
  14
  
  Fork away!
  
  https://codeberg.org/QazCetelic/OSS-Blacklist
  
  13
Give the copyright to the FSF

Donate to the FSF
33
- why donate it? theyll just be sued? do they have powerful legal teams?
  
  2
  
  The FSF actively encourages people to do that, and yes their legal team is there. Not sure whether it's "powerful" but surely better than a single developer
  
  6
- How do you "give copyright" to them?
  
  1
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.

30
- You get unknown I guess. People move to Github to get a chance of contributions
  
  10
- @erranto @Dehydrated z library, pdfdrive, piratebay
  
  9
  
  Anna’s Archive is probably the best source for books. I use it all the time, actually, I even use it right now. It's also great for students who need textbooks. Fuck Pearson and those other scammers!
  
  11
  
  pdfdrive Thanks for the suggestion, is it any better than z-library or do they host the same content ?
  
  3
- Most ppl don't think about that or don't know that their project will take off. And then it is already too late.
  
  9
Don't ever buy anything from these people, got it.

28
How is the plugin illegal?

20
- 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.
  
  48
  
  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.
  
  11
  
  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 cybergovernance@haier-europe.com in case anyone was curious.
  
  9
- Ask those brain dead fucks at Haier
  
  9
  
  It sounds like someone out of their jurisdiction should host the repos and tell them to pound sand.
  
  13
How many GBs do these ACs upload to the company's cloud?

15
- Too many probably
  
  4
- That ended up being a router error. It was actually something like 1mb.
  
  4
Another one to the boycott list

15
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?

12
- 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).
  
  14
  
  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
  
  6
  
  Well then I guess it is pretty obvious
  
  5
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3
Haier is Hai Er in Chinese, just saying.

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