Haier sends takedown request to Home Assistant plugin developer

Haier has sent a takedown request to a developer who posted Home Assistant plugins on GitHub. The developer created plug-ins that allowed users to control devices such as air conditioners, ovens and vacuum cleaners locally via the smart home platform.

Developer Andre0512 writes on his GitHub page that he has to remove two popular integrations. This concerns Haier hOn and pyhOn, which must be installed via the Home Assistant Community Store or HACS. Smart home platform Home Assistant contains some ‘official’ plug-ins developed or validated by Home Assistant, but many services need to be integrated via HACS. Andre0512 built the two plugins based on Haier’s hOn appwhich makes it possible to control various white goods from the company.

In the takedown request, Haier writes that the two integrations violate the company’s terms and conditions. The plug-ins “use our services in an unauthorized manner that causes significant economic harm to our business,” Haier wrote.

Andre0512 says he wants to take the tools offline in the coming days, but the question is whether that makes sense in practice. The plugins were open source available under an MIT license. There are now already made 73 forksa huge increase from the few dozen forks the plugins had before.