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 conditions.
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: https://github.com/Andre0512/hon https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn
(sidenote: Haier owns GE Appliance, so for our American folks it may affect you folks too)
Before the trial happens, it could really go either way, even if the defendant is obviously in the right - there could be some procedural slip up that causes them to lose anyway.
However, a lawyer isn’t going to assume that they will make some slip up, so if it is obviously in the defendant’s favour they will work pro bono. There is still some risk for them, because if they lose they don’t get paid, but they’re confident they’ll win.
Edit: wrote the reply thinking this was a conversation about awarding costs to the defendant, that was a different thread. The first paragraph remains unchanged though.
I wish Lemmy showed you more of the context than just the last reply.