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My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

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Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#211

Post by timv »

sushid wrote: post #208
adekok wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Not the parent commenter but I can see how this would harm the product's image as you've stated. However, they're not forcing you to do anything. Technically, they're just saying they're not going to maintain their code anymore and it's up to you to continue or not. It's as if you've gotten a lot of business to your small coffee shop because I've chosen to shuttle potential customers to and back from your shop. If on…

> If one day I tell you I'm going to stop doing this, but you're welcome to pick up the slack, am I truly being unreasonable?

Well, if you (dishonestly) tell the customers that the shuttle is stopping because the coffee shop refused to work with you then you're absolutely being unreasonable.

And if you tell the coffee shop that they can pick up the slack, but they need to sign this one-sided, ridiculous contract that requires that you only use their approved bus company, and don't pick up customers from any unapproved stops, and accept all liability if something goes wrong, and pay for all maintenance and repairs on the bus, (including repainting it if/when the bus company changes their branding) and agree that all passengers are customers of the bus company not the coffee shop, and the bus service can chose to take them to a different coffee shop, and the bus company can discontinue the service at any time without notice, and you can't disclose the terms of this agreement..

Well, then you're truly being unreasonable. You're welcome to try it of course, but you can expect to be publicly called out on it.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#212

Post by pbarnes_1 »

lindentibbets wrote: post #82
timdierks wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand, you can justify the work as a part of making a more reliable platform without per-service shims, but presumably you could have asked the services to adopt a better open API rather than IFTTT-specific integration. But why did you ignore all the commentary on your TOS? Are you endorsing those terms as the company you want to be?

Our API is not yet open, but we very much want it to be soon. I stand behind our TOS and I agree that we can make it clearer.

Your TOS is a disaster. Anyone agreeing to it is an idiot.

Also, the developer pays YOU $3000/year to write an integration for YOU? WTF?

I run a service larger than yours. Not a chance in hell I'd agree to what you're asking there. You need to reorient your thought process around mutually beneficial partnerships instead of acting like you're doing someone a favor by letting them onto your platform. It'll work out better.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#213

Post by lsiebert »

dwaxe wrote: post #148
ersii wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you clarify if you actually have someone that is responsible for reading and responding on the official contact channel ( http://ifttt.com/platform ) for "Partnership" Inquiries?

I've found that if you ever want to contact a company, find the appropriate person and email them. Collectively owned company emails are terrible because they often don't have a single point of responsibility.

Also for github repos, project maintainers, email if you want a response, don't use an issue or the wiki or form. I just got a minor rails gem updated today that had people complaining about the lack of updates in issues by emailing the account owner.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#214

Post by thehooplehead »

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…

>> Every service is, on IFTTT or not. We care about the people who use them and build them. The changes we are asking for are indeed more work, but we know they will lead to a better Pinboard Channel on IFTTT in the long term.

This struck me as remarkably hollow. It doesn't even go into the issues of the strong Terms of Service conditions. Maybe, it's the juxtaposition of having just read a reddit thread about CEO interaction [1], but, to me, this kind of message is worse than silence. It's bad enough to get those fake "warm", "friendly" emails from startups trying to stop churn, but at least those are automated.

I like Maciej's style because there's no mediation of business-speak, it's just the message plus some eccentric local color/flourish. Shoot straight or just step aside. Silence is an option.

[1] reddit discussion about CEO interaction, interesting tangent https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4cfd2h/im_founder_o...

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#215

Post by eru »

zeveb wrote: post #189
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

This one is just gut-wrenching to read: http://idlewords.com/2012/09/no_evidence_of_disease.htm And this, of course, is a modern classic: http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm

The second one sounds a bit too glib until you notice that one of the websites he makes fun of is his own.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#216

Post by kefka »

idlewords wrote: post #138
bambax wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being CEO of IFTTT must not be a very demanding job if you offer to come over to every service that connects to your platform, in order to contribute to coding their API. Joking aside, Maciej isn't asking for "more time", he's asking for: 1. Money, if he has to do your work for you 2. Some kind of guaranty that your undocumented, private API won't change without notice in the future, rendering all this work useless 3…

Actually, all I want is for existing IFTTT recipes that use Pinboard not to break. I am fine with IFTTT discontinuing support for my site because of our diverging views on whether a service like IFTTT should be a platform or a roll of duct tape, but the stuff people have duct-taped together should stay duct-taped together.

I think the other part here, is that IFTTT is making it sound blackmail-y...

IFTTT to users: Weeeeelllll, we had great integration with X service, but they refuse to play ball with us any more. And now, their connector broke, and they refuse to fix it!

It makes you look bad to the users. And if you refuse this faustian 'deal', you're slandered and stuff breaks. And that break isn't because software rot, but because they broke it. And then blame you for it.

Yeah, blackmail is the right word.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#217

Post by mud_dauber »

alanh wrote: post #177
Asparagirl wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your hobby could be a MVP for the first CAaaS -- CEO Apologies As A Service. (If you act fast, Theranos could be your first Enterprise customer.)

Funny! Now for a business name... "Palms Up, Inc."? Or maybe just "Public Relations LLC."

Sorry.co....

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#218

Post by tracerfett »

steveax wrote: post #61
r00fus wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the Yelp business model? They're notorious for calling up businesses (mainly restaurants) and then offering the business a way to pay to remove negative comments on Yelp (there was a case where some were entered by a Yelp employee!) It's essentially the "protection/promotion" model.

That's a nice restaurant you have there... it'd be a shame if something happened to it.

Yelpers deserve all the boogers and cum they have coming their way...

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#219

Post by lindentibbets »

meesterdude wrote: post #209

I was going to integrate my app with IFTTT, but after reading this post, as well as the responses from the CEO in this thread, there is no way I will ever in a million years integrate with IFTTT. I think its an interesting train-wreck to take note of. And it is clearly a reflection of the CEO, who has consistently misunderstood or ignored the true complaints people have about this new direction, while half-apologizin…

Really sorry to hear it, but appreciate the feedback. We are working to address concerns across the board regarding ToS and communication. I'd be more than happy to hop on a call to address if you want shoot me an email, my first name at ifttt.com

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#220

Post by jdcarter »

I want to make a correction about the patent bit. Maciej says:

> And they assert the right to patent any clever ideas I have while doing that free work for them, even though I hate software patents:

The relevant bit of the IFTTT TOS:

> 12. Patent License. Licensee hereby grants IFTTT a nonexclusive, sublicensable, perpetual, fully-paid, worldwide license to fully exercise and exploit all patent rights with respect to improvements or extensions created by or for Licensee to the API

They're not trying to patent your work, they're saying that you grant them a license to any patents you might get that relate to your IFTTT integration. In other words, a developer cannot create an integration for IFTTT, patent something in there, then turn around and sue IFTTT for patent infringement. This is pretty standard language in software licenses/contracts/terms of service.

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