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)
Good point. Actually it isn’t a huge gamble in Germany, other than in Usa (which is again the extremely worst example).
Costs of legal defense are moderate. There is a public tariff for lawyer costs and for court fees. So the only areas where you even have a chance to spend huge amounts are finding or creating evidence (private investigators etc), or hiring too many lawyers.
It seems that hourly rates of german lawyers are €100 to €500 which is about what I would expect. Even a few hours of time is a lot. To explain the case, have the lawyer or their designate review it, prepare for a case and show up to court is many hours at a minimum. Even if it is a simple matter.
That linked text is very, very wrong.
Better delete your comment about it, from lemmy and from your brain.