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Bye bye BetterSlack

g3rv4.com

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121–130 of 392 posts

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#121

Post by jahewson »

barbegal wrote: post #73
whoisjuan wrote: post #27

I 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…

Sort of. It’s fine to have a disclaimer which says “this will void your warranty”, just look at smartphone jailbreaking. He’s not breaking Slack’s terms of service - his users are.

But then the next logical step is to argue that he’s inducing a breach of contract by his users, which seems to be the case.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#123

Post by dagi3d »

ateesdalejr wrote: post #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.

Hard to solve that if the browser allows that via the extensions mechanism.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#124

Post by saagarjha »

fbmac wrote: post #116
saagarjha wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Nope. There are ways to reverse engineer closed source apps and inject code into them.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#125

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

LinuxBender wrote: post #107
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it was dumb, and I didn't stutter. It's an extraordinarily short-sighted move to switch to Slack. IRC may not be for everyone, but clients like The Lounge and alternatives like Matrix are quite friendly to non-engineers.

I've been contemplating putting The Lounge in front of my IRC servers. How well does it scale? i.e. how many web users can you support with {n} amount of memory/cpu? I've used cgiirc, but it isn't pretty and some people want pretty and client-less.

I'm not sure, to be honest. I would be interested in hearing what you discover if you investigate this yourself.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#126

Post by jahewson »

mattigames wrote: post #117
barbegal wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s not the case at all. Your “ownership” of the device isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. If you’ve signed an agreement with Slack not to modify their product, then you don’t get to modify their product.

Blocking ads is not quite the same thing as modifying a product - but I don’t see any obvious reason why an EULA which forbids ad-blocking wouldn’t be enforceable. Though it would be deeply unpopular.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#127

Post by onli »

mattigames wrote: post #117
barbegal wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is not that absurd, they actually tried that. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-trial-adblocking/...

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#128

Post by gsich »

>The project already has forks. There’s no stopping it.

Slack died for me when they stopped IRC and XMPP and used a BS excuse for it.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#129

Post by danmg »

g3rv4 wrote: post #18
comesee wrote: post #7

I dont see any legal reason why you can't publish the extension under a different name. Your extension is under no legal obligation to follow their acceptable use policy, only the users that use your extension.

There are two problems with this approach: 1. I don't want to get involved in that, even if I'm based in Uruguay and they'd have a hard time suing me. 2. What they could do is put resources to detect the extension and block it. We could start a mouse and cat game that they'd win... I don't have their resources to invest in it. After all, all I wanted was to solve Slack for me, and that would make it harder.

change it to 'SlackSucks'. Make it change the logo to a toilet or some sticks of ram that are on fire. It's now a parody.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#130

Post by thebaer »

byte1918 wrote: post #40
g3rv4 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> they don't want people injecting javascript on their website They should send an email to every extension author ever, and maybe even browser vendors for supporting such a malicious feature.

...and then notify every ISP, every place that offers free public Wi-Fi, every airline that has Wi-Fi on their planes, anyone else who injects code into web pages...
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