this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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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!

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[–] [email protected] 118 points 9 months ago (3 children)

significant economic harm to our company

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

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

My manager once asked me if I could code in API

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 79 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Seconded, and added Haier to my mental list of companies to never buy from.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 55 points 9 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

[–] [email protected] 47 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago

EFF.org would have lawyers, that I hope would take up the case to help the original repo maintainer out..

[–] [email protected] 43 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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 😑

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (8 children)

Do you use any smart home solution with your AC? Maybe even Home Assistant? Just curious

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's amazing. I love such open source projects! I love the Lemmy, Home Assistant and Open Source community.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I did the same thing for Panasonic ACs if anybody wants to get rid of the cloud: https://github.com/DomiStyle/esphome-panasonic-ac

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I'm running a Venstar Colortouch thermostat. They're not cheap, but they have a local API and there's a Homeassistant integration.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 9 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.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Someone really should maintain a list like that, hosted on multiple non big tech git hosts.

This recent Anti-FOSS propaganda needs to stop

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago (3 children)
  1. Give the copyright to the FSF
  2. Donate to the FSF
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[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

You get unknown I guess. People move to Github to get a chance of contributions

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Most ppl don't think about that or don't know that their project will take off. And then it is already too late.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

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!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

pdfdrive Thanks for the suggestion, is it any better than z-library or do they host the same content ?

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago

Don't ever buy anything from these people, got it.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (2 children)

How is the plugin illegal?

[–] [email protected] 48 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ask those brain dead fucks at Haier

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It sounds like someone out of their jurisdiction should host the repos and tell them to pound sand.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Codeberg is hosted in Germany

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (2 children)

How many GBs do these ACs upload to the company's cloud?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

That ended up being a router error. It was actually something like 1mb.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Too many probably

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

Another one to the boycott list

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Well then I guess it is pretty obvious

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/RcSnd3cyti0

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

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