Well, how about having a local API and have no calls at all to your cloud infrastructure? Probably too easy and you cannot lock people into your ecosystem.

It's damage control, they realised what they did was getting them bad PR since news of it started spreading so they are attempting to remedy the bad PR through damage control

Corporations only care about profits, not people

Yeah, they can fuck off. When their opening salvo was threats and legal bluster, I don't see why anyone should trust an alleged olive branch now. The right thing to do was not to send this email second.

I have to work with Haier in my business now as well ever since they bought GE. They're a shitty company that goes back on their word constantly (at least within the B2B space), and nobody should be giving them one thin dime.

Recently, we've observed a substantial increase in AWS calls attributed to your plugin, prompting the communication you previously received as standard protocol for our company, but as mentioned earlier, we are committed to transparency and keenly interested in collaborating with you not only to optimize your plugin in alignment with our cost control objectives,

i get it; their amazon account gets hit hard by some plugin data stream, they trace the source and kill it for monetary reasons. makes total sense. handled terrible, but still, i also completely understand getting some giant bill from amazon and freaking the fuck out.

From the previous issue it sounds like the developer has proper legal representation, but in his place I wouldn't even begin talking with Haier until they formally revoke the C&D, and provide enforceable assurances that they won't sue in the future.

Also I don't know what their margins are like, but even if this cost them an extra $1000 in AWS fees on top of what their official app would have cost them (I seriously doubt it would be that much unless their infrastructure is absolute bananas), then it would probably only be a single-digit number of sales that they would have needed to loose to come out worse off from this.

Just set a rate limit? This could have been a code change and a blog post.

Honestly they should find away to make it work with HA instead of the companies servers.

The spacing in the email screwed up the formatting:

Dear Andre,

I'm Gianpiero Morbello, serving as the Head of IOT and Ecosystem at Haier Europe.

It's a pleasure to hear from you. We just received your email, and coincidentally, I was in the process of sending you a mail with a similar suggestion.

I want to emphasize Haier Europe's enthusiasm for supporting initiatives in the open world. Please note that our IOT vision revolves around a three-pillar strategy:

• achieving 100% connectivity for our appliances,
• opening our IOT infrastructure (we are aligned with Matter and extensively integrating third-party connections through APIs, and looking for any other opportunity it might be interesting),
• and the third pillar involves enhancing consumer value through the integration of various appliances and services, as an example we are pretty active in the energy management opening our platform to solution which are coming from energy providers.

Our strategy's cornerstone is the IOT platform and the HON app, introduced on AWS in 2020 with a focus on Privacy and Security by Design principles. We're delighted that our HON connected appliances and solutions have been well-received so the number of connected active consumers is growing day after day, with high level of satisfaction proven by the high rates we receive in the App stores.

Prioritizing the efficiency of HON functions when making AWS calls has been crucial, particularly in light of the notable increase in active users mentioned above. This focus enables us to effectively control costs.

Recently, we've observed a substantial increase in AWS calls attributed to your plugin, prompting the communication you previously received as standard protocol for our company, but as mentioned earlier, we are committed to transparency and keenly interested in collaborating with you not only to optimize your plugin in alignment with our cost control objectives, but also to cooperate in better serving your community.

I propose scheduling a call involving our IOT Technology department to address the issue comprehensively and respond to any questions both parties may have.

Hope to hear back from you soon.

Best regards

Gianpiero Morbello Head of Brand & IOT Haier Europe

Happy to see them backtrack. I didn't think the backlash would be large enough. Let's see if they follow through on the backtrack though

I'm glad the threat of being on a FOSS Hall of Shame is effective for some companies, and that they can't just frivolous lawsuit away a hobby developer without consequences to their bottom line, which would have set a bad precedent against small-time FOSS developers everywhere.

Now their status to me is moved from "Shitlist" to "Shitlist Pending", they've talked their talk so now it's time to see them walk their walk. Best would be to allow users to control their Haier products from their own servers rather than Haier's. That will reduce their cloud computing bills from 3rd party users but they can still offer "compelling value" in their walled garden ecosystem as a simple one-and-done setup. Win-win right?

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 6 acronyms.

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