Pretty moronic of Slack to try and take it down considering it just furthers their own product.
Bye bye BetterSlack
71–80 of 392 posts
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
now that they got all that money, I wouldn't be surprised if they killed the web app and moved away from Electron to do native apps that are harder to be messed with.
> to do native apps that are harder to be messed with As someone who messes with native apps: this really isn't true, at least in my experience. Native apps tend to follow platform paradigms, which usually make them reasonably well designed and structured–sometimes more so than web applications. Usually adding functionality is simply a matter of finding the class that manages the component, rather than digging thorou…
oh, yeah... that's something I want to look into
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#73I think you can safely ignore this cease and desist. Just change the name and add a disclaimer so your users know that by using your extension they are violating their acceptable use policy. This is no different than any user writing a Tampermonkey script to modify any website they want to modify. Even further, this is no different than a user opening the Dev Tools console and modifying things there.
A disclaimer would not work. Disclaimers might work where there is a risk that the user will violate the acceptable use policy but this cease and desist letter has effectively said that all users will violate the acceptable use policy therefore the disclaimer would be quickly dismissed by any court of law.
As a slightly bad analogy imagine a disclaimer that customers of a fairground ride might experience back pain. If it was found that all previous customers had suffered back pain then the disclaimer would not be enforceable and the ride owners could be sued for negligence.
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#74I wonder how much longer Slack’s web client is going to remain a first class product? Clearly, it was a good way to drive adoption, but seems that at this point they want ever more control.
> I wonder how much longer Slack’s web client is going to remain a first class product?
It never was? The Android client takes 10 seconds to start, runs my device hot and the UI is so bad that the first time I tried to respond to a thread I couldn't figure out how to get out of the thread view.
The desktop client uses 1GB of memory gobbles my CPU and takes 20 seconds to start.
The "least bad client", the web client still takes 10 seconds to start, for no obvious reason. Last week I looked into it, it turns out that every time the client makes a request to the server it the TTFB is 300 to 500ms, on a connection with 40ms ping. So their backend is just as fucked as all their clients.
Even their email notifications don't work: every time I click on the link they send me it doesn't take me to the mention!!!
They did corner the market so clearly they must be doing something, but really I just can't see it. I'm completely stumped.
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#75I wonder how much longer Slack’s web client is going to remain a first class product? Clearly, it was a good way to drive adoption, but seems that at this point they want ever more control.
There are many enterprises that have web-only workflows. Eliminating the web client for Slack would be like eliminating the web client for Google Docs.
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#76So it lasted 3 days? https://g3rv4.com/2018/08/betterslack From that post: > I may build an Electron app that patches the Electron app… so far, that’s what makes the most sense to me. But we’ll see. Even if this was against the ToS, could it be stopped? I didn't know one Electron app could target the other.
> I didn't know one Electron app could target the other.
An Electron app consists of two parts: HTML5 (which can run Javascript, but within a browser-like sandbox), and native Javascript code, running under Node.js with no sandbox whatsoever. The native half of an Electron app can do anything to your filesystem (including the parts that contain other applications) that any other native app can do.
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#77> Injecting javascript into Slack via Chrome extension can have an impact on the privacy and security of our customers and our product.
So can taking screenshots of messages. If injecting JS can possibly affect the security of your platform then that's a vulnerability you should fix, not send a C&D to some developer about.
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
this was a bunch of Tampermonkey scripts... but I don't want to ignore their cease and desist. I... just don't do it. changing the name is not an issue... however, if I have to take it down, that's moot.
"I... just don't do it." You mean you do not ignore cease and desist orders by principal? Why? There should be at least some criteria by which you judge which ones you can ignore and which you can't? What if they told you to cease and desist programming forever on any project because they state in their terms that once you mess with their UI with JavaScript you are not allowed to program anymore? Ridiculous right? So…
> You are free to write any extension that does anything to any website as long as you aren't hurting users' human rights and as long as you aren't hacking them if you ask me.
But you're not the person being asked - the courts in g3rv4's jurisdiction and in Slack's are the ones who would be asked, if it came to it. Have you read the relevant law (including case law) about copyright and "cybercrime" in these jurisdictions and concluded that, in fact, Slack does not have the power to restrict this? Have you read the Slack user agreement and concluded that the provisions in that user agreement are unenforceable?
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
You won't be able to tell your lawyer "this is no different than paying you with real money" and hand over a stack of monopoly banknotes. Legal advice by analogy is unlikely to be all that useful.
Analogies are used all the time in legal decisions. You'll find them regularly in supreme court opinions, for example. Anytime something that has never been seen is litigated, it's likely that analogies will be made to figure out the law [1]. I think the real lesson is "don't take legal advice from internet forums of non-lawyers", or at least take it with a grain of salt. Not all analogies are equally good and only a…
Yes, that's what I meant. Sure, a court can make an analogy but hey, they're a court. Random stranger on the internet is unlikely to provide you with a useful legal analogy. If anything, this seems like an intersection of topic and venue (legal stuff, forums for technically-minded people) that generates giant billowing clouds of useless analogies.
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#80Slack has really jumped the shark. Between this and their cutting off their IRC gateway, I don't really see the point of using it. You can't be openly hostile to people who create "hacks" like this if you're claiming to be a communication medium for "hackers."
It worked out so well for Twitter, why not duplicate that success!