I just want to say thanks for putting this followup and their email up. I like having these things to point to when I choose alternative services or convince companies to stop doing business with other companies.
Bye bye BetterSlack
111–120 of 392 posts
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
A binding agreement? Why would he sign one of those?
You don't have to literally sign something to be bound by an agreement.
In many jurisdictions you can't be bound by an agreement if not explicitly agreeing. It most likely boils down to where Gervasio lives. In my country for example I'd be certain Slack would have no standing at all with this. Though even in the US Slack would have to pull an Oracle to win this (which, well, is the risk that they might). Good reminder though in which moral category of enterprises Slack has to be sorted in.
It does not matter, he does not want to fight this.
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#113I got into a similar pickle recently and did some press about it: http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com/getting-from-cease-and-...
I'm also working on a Chrome Extension that modifies the functionality of a website, but this is giving me second thoughts.
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 s…
> They did corner the market so clearly they must be doing something, but really I just can't see it. I'm completely stumped. One of the reasons is the lack of competition, e.g., we use Microsoft Teams instead, but its also an electron app with the same problems (and takes ages to start).
I guess this must be it. IRC could in theory do everything Slack does but setting up a server is a pain and shiny clients are rare...
I wonder about the rest of the competition, for a while everybody was using hipchat, I never used it myself, I wonder why nobody talks about it anymore.
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#115I understand the naming issue but from the look of it the extension only works locally, where's the issue with that?
they don't want people injecting javascript on their website. That's all there's to it. I'm not sending anything anywhere. I'm not storing anything. I'm not profiting from it.
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Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#116Earlier 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…
are you thinking about opensource? I don't think it would be opensource
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#117I 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. I…
False, how a website is rendered on a device I own is not enforceable (legally speaking) by a acceptable use policy or any website policy; otherwise people would just use that to deter ad-blockers browsers extensions instead of all the shady tactics commonly used.
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#118One of the nicest cease and desist letters I've ever seen. I think what they're asking in the name change is more than fair, and providing guidence on changing the functionality to comply with their api seems like a good approach. Kuddos to Slack legal for keeping the matter human and civil.
What it highlights is that you can send a decent cease and desist letter, and still be totally horrible.
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't have to literally sign something to be bound by an agreement.
In many jurisdictions you can't be bound by an agreement if not explicitly agreeing. It most likely boils down to where Gervasio lives. In my country for example I'd be certain Slack would have no standing at all with this. Though even in the US Slack would have to pull an Oracle to win this (which, well, is the risk that they might). Good reminder though in which moral category of enterprises Slack has to be sorted…
It might be more than just a EULA. Often to sign up for an API key, you have to go through a bit more explicit agreement to a ToS than there is in a standard funnel. There's also a bit more of an expectation that people will actually read them (and are competent to understand them).
Re: Bye bye BetterSlack
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
The heart of their complaint was not the name. It was the fact that the extension injects code into their site.
So, even more nefarious, and in violation of their terms?
JavaScript runs on the client genius, not the server. You're not changing their product, your modifying how it is run on your personal machine.