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
If only they would have reached out this way the first time instead of a cease and desist, their brand getting dragged through the mud could have been avoided.
Respectfully, I disagree. Yes, indeed this first message is PR damage control, but there is something to be gained here for the FOSS community.
This backtrack sends the message out, discouraging other companies with legal departments from trying the same trick else they risk sales. If a positive resolution comes out of this (A. Andre's project becomes officially supported by Haier with more features whilst being more efficient with API calls, or B. Haier develops a local API option) then it shows other companies there is value in working together with the FOSS community rather than viewing them as an adversary or as competition to be eliminated.
Nah, this is Haier trying to save face. They saw how the story went, that the repo was forked a thousand times in a few hours. They know their engineering team can't win, long term, against dedicated, pissed off geeks.
Would they play nice with you if the tables were reversed? No.
They already played the legal card, engaging with them at this point would be extremely naive.
Fuck them. Now is the time to pummel them even harder. Making them eat their words is what will send a message to the rest of the jackasses designing garbage and tracking us relentlessly for access to what should be trivial to engineer features.