This Smart Home Company Attacked Open Source..

Haier, makers of many home appliances, including a range of smart home appliances, started attacking a Home Assistant community member, threatening legal action against them unless they took down their Home Assistant integration. Let's talk about what happened.

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[handcoding]

Is anyone maintaining, like, a Google Sheets spreadsheet with a “Never Buy Anything from these Companies No Matter What” list for companies like Haier and Chamberlain?

Because as of now, I won’t ever touch these companies.

[MrDead]

i may be one of the first but my dishwasher packed in and i actively choose another manufacturer purely due to this

[Yves_Cools]

So Haier Europe threatened an open source software/plugin developer (Andre Basche), then did a 180 but never bothered to actually apologize for their outright arrogant and respectless behavior ???
My response would be : KEEP BOYCOTTING HAIER EU !!!

[chrisdixon]

Thanks for highlighting this issue Lewis. The sooner "smart" product companies realise that just because they supply a useful device doesn't give them free access to our wallets the better!

[GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket]

Just like you said, Haier made the choice to require "their" products to use AWS. Haier could enable a local API or sale a hub product for those of us wanting local control. The problem with that is it means once they shutdown the servers your AC won't lose the functionality you bought and paid for. They can't have that; if there's no reason for you to buy a new appliance you'll just keep using the one you already OWN.

[mpoiuytr]

Haier brands in Europe are Haier (Mainly refrigeration), Candy (Italian) and Hoover. Now you

[RichBeaden]

I feel like the community should get together and put together a smart home standards doc with best practices such as local api and then we can push that onto companies when they act like this

[GertStalpaert]

I also would like to see more companies partner with Home Assistant to develop official integrations for their products.
I appreciate Lewis for bringing this issue to attention.

[dpn]

Last year, we almost replaced all our kitchen appliances with Haier but in the end decided not to as we didn't see much point in that at the time but decided to postpone that... Now Haier is off the list!

[smartercircuits]

This is a perfect case to highlight the importance of cloudless automation on both the part of the users and manufacturers. They want to hold their customers hostage by denying them use of all the features of a product the customer purchased unless they pay a subscription or are in some other way dependent on those companies--even if it means losing all functionality when the company gets bored of supporting "legacy" products. Planned obsolescence for the digital age and it not only wastes resources by forcing us to continuously buy new products, it is an egregious violation of the right of ownership. If the company does not want to allow modification of a device, they should lease it instead of selling it. As a renter, I would have to get permission from the landlord to modify my dwelling, but if I BUY a house, I can do as I please with it--it is no different with any other possession; Once I give up my money--a small representation of the time I spent working--that product is mine to do with as I see fit.
Repo forked.

[kefalboy]

Thanks Lewis... As electrician and smart home integrator, you cannot imagine how many problems customers have from "closed" ecosystems. They get trapped. I think this issue needs to be regulated from goverments and force companies to open their API's for the benefit of the customers.

[markshaz]

We always bought Haier products until now. Both of our washer and tumble dryer are Haier products (Candy) and will soon be replaced by a company that will support open source.

[wacobeer]

Note to self.... Avoid "cloud based anything including "eco-systems" for Home Automation (and really almost everything else. Use only products (sensors and control points) that support MQTT (like Tasmota). Then we will all have global flexibility worst case. This, like Chamberlain, indicate what our future will be like. What if our Hue devices suddenly stopped working? It appears to be in the cards as a possibility.

[Geoff_W]

Toyota did this too a while back for their home assistant integration, claimed it was 'stolen IP' which was ridiculous...

[heimatliebeMM]

In generell I wish much more companies would work together with HA for official integrations.

[WillThat]

This just proves the point that these centralized smart device servers are not for "quality of service" or "minimizing downtime" for the customers. Using these cloud devices how you would think is intended is not sustainable for these companies. It's all about data collection and subscriptions for basically no benefits.

[TechySpeaking]

1:48 "I hope to get an answer and until then I'll leave the repos online."

This guy gets an immediate C&D from a major company and says, "nah, I'll wait."

[brianfritz]

Please don't apologize for covering this stuff. I'm so glad you are doing this. Perhaps manufacturers will start listening to these requests for local control, dropping their ideas of nickel and diming us for access to our own appliances!

[Sierra-Whisky]

Fun fact: there's no easier way to find a good repository than by looking for a repository that received a takedown notice 😂😉

[TheDarkPreacher]

Haier probably wanted to make a Home Assistant integration themselves, found Andre's, got big mad that someone had beat them to it and was giving it away for the low low price of free.99

Haier can't make money off a subscription model for a Home Assistant integration if there is already one that is out there for free.