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My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

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Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#161

Post by adekok »

rtpg wrote: post #125
timv wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I apologize for any misunderstanding our communications today have caused I'm not so sure there is a misunderstanding. The facts seem relatively clear: - You want services to implement your proprietary API so that IFTTT integration with their service runs more smoothly. - Your business success is predicated on other services providing those APIs, but you want them to do the work for no reward. - You have license te…

On the other side of the spectrum, do you expect Slack to maintain the Slack integration you write for your webapp? Do you expect Microsoft to maintain Excel plugins? Of course they might do so for a couple vital ones to help jumpstart the integration system, but it's not black and white. IFTTT is a bit different because this is their value-add. But is it so different that you can make a claim that in a context-free…

> On the other side of the spectrum, do you expect Slack to maintain the Slack integration you write for your webapp? Do you expect Microsoft to maintain Excel plugins?

No. Because the situations are different.

Here, Pinboard did essentially nothing to get IFTTT to work the first time. IFTTT wrote the integration code, and has been maintaining it. They're now trying to push that effort onto other people.

i.e. They're trying to make YOU maintain code THEY wrote. Or worse, they're trying to make YOU write code which has no value for you, but value for THEM.

If you refuse to work for free, they will remove you from IFTTT integration... to the detriment of their own users.

> Of course they might do so for a couple vital ones to help jumpstart the integration system, but it's not black and white.

It is. Given their ToS, it's pretty damned black and white. IFTTT is pushing their development costs onto the platforms they pull data from. And then claiming that those platforms have to continue working for free, and that IFTTT owns the results of that work.

If you can't see a problem with that, I'm going to make you work for my company, for free, forever.

What? You don't like that?

Well... the same applies here.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#162

Post by facepalm »

lindentibbets wrote: post #73

I am the CEO over at IFTTT. I apologize for any misunderstanding our communications today have caused. I built the Pinboard Channel on IFTTT and have maintained it for years. I am also a paying customer of Pinboard! I’ve built for hundreds of platforms and any changes to those platforms by default suck. At IFTTT, we've been on the receiving end of platform changes too many times to count. I want to make sure we do it…

Why not create an open, public standard, like Atom or RSS?

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#163

Post by davidpratt »

hkmurakami wrote: post #144
klenwell wrote: post #23

If you've never heard of it, If-This-Then-That is a service that lets you connect websites together, so that things that happen in one place automatically trigger some regrettable action someplace else. For example, you might write an IFTTT ‘recipe’ that tweets anything you post on Facebook, because you are a monster. I'd heard of it (I may have even signed up with it at some point), but this has to be the best expla…

Maciej is a fabulous writer with a deft mix of wry, self-deprecating wit and precise expressions. If you aren't familiar with his writing, you'd likely enjoy "Dabblers and Blowhards" http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

when i was reading it i was impressed by the quality and tone of the writing.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#164

Post by rapind »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #17

I hadn't seen Botize before. In structure and capabilities, it looks a lot more promising to me than either IFTTT or Zapier (for instance, it supports maintaining lists and adding/selecting data from them), except that half the site seems to be localized to Spanish and doesn't seem to have an option anywhere to change the site language.

Might want to check out https://github.com/cantino/huginn as well.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#165

Post by bsirkia »

eru wrote: post #150
hkmurakami wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maciej is a fabulous writer with a deft mix of wry, self-deprecating wit and precise expressions. If you aren't familiar with his writing, you'd likely enjoy "Dabblers and Blowhards" http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

Or my favourite: http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_t...

"Argentina on Two Steaks A Day" is one of my favorite essays ever: http://www.idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_d...

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#166

Post by adekok »

gexla wrote: post #134
timv wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't much of the legal stuff just a way to cover their tails? Sure, but most of it puts your tail on the line instead. They've decided that they somehow have enough power to make you do their job, and make sure you do it in a way that protects their legal interests over yours. You'd be a fool to agree to it. > Do they really want your content? Yes. Their lawyer told them that it was a good idea to make sure their…

I feel like there are two sides you can take on this. There is the "ideal" side where we read all the fine print and stay away from services which violate X elements which we individually consider as going over the line. Then there is the boots on the ground reality which is what really happens vs. what could happen. I don't think either side is right or wrong. I see people like RMS as being on the extreme end of the…

> I would like to see someone who is expert in this area weigh in on why these services come up with these terms

Obligatory IANAL. But I don't need to be.

IFTTT came up with these terms because they believe the terms to be beneficial to them. It's that simple.

They could have put terms in which said "integration with IFTTT means you're giving us permission to connect to your service, and to copy and redistribute the data without limit". After all, that's what they do, technically.

Instead, they're claiming ownership over the data. Your data.

That's something very different.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#167

Post by Archibald_Eric »

lindentibbets wrote: post #73

I am the CEO over at IFTTT. I apologize for any misunderstanding our communications today have caused. I built the Pinboard Channel on IFTTT and have maintained it for years. I am also a paying customer of Pinboard! I’ve built for hundreds of platforms and any changes to those platforms by default suck. At IFTTT, we've been on the receiving end of platform changes too many times to count. I want to make sure we do it…

Do your own development work you asshole.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#168

Post by gkanai »

lindentibbets wrote: post #73

I am the CEO over at IFTTT. I apologize for any misunderstanding our communications today have caused. I built the Pinboard Channel on IFTTT and have maintained it for years. I am also a paying customer of Pinboard! I’ve built for hundreds of platforms and any changes to those platforms by default suck. At IFTTT, we've been on the receiving end of platform changes too many times to count. I want to make sure we do it…

Until you change your terms of service and move to publicly-available APIs, your actions speak louder than comments on HN.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#169

Post by Archibald_Eric »

rtpg wrote: post #125
timv wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I apologize for any misunderstanding our communications today have caused I'm not so sure there is a misunderstanding. The facts seem relatively clear: - You want services to implement your proprietary API so that IFTTT integration with their service runs more smoothly. - Your business success is predicated on other services providing those APIs, but you want them to do the work for no reward. - You have license te…

On the other side of the spectrum, do you expect Slack to maintain the Slack integration you write for your webapp? Do you expect Microsoft to maintain Excel plugins? Of course they might do so for a couple vital ones to help jumpstart the integration system, but it's not black and white. IFTTT is a bit different because this is their value-add. But is it so different that you can make a claim that in a context-free…

They make the money, they pay the developers.

It's that simple.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#170

Post by Archibald_Eric »

lindentibbets wrote: post #87
zrgiu_ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is even answering our emails/applications for an IFTTT channel so I'm going to shamelessly hook in here and ask: who do small companies (that's what startups are, right?) have to bribe to get bigger companies to even look down at us and exchange an email or two ? And PLEASE don't tell me to "just fill out the form at http://ifttt.com/platform" , tired of that already. We have hundreds of thousands of active us…

Our apologies! We are smaller than you think :) Send me an email at my first name at ifttt.com

Of course you're smaller - you're out sourcing your development to everyone else while still taking money for the work you expect them to do.
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