Ripcord survived C&D letters because it didn't charge. I feel bad for OP for putting all this work in, because it's really cool - but you're going to get sued.
I'm of the opinion that using unofficial clients for any online service should be a legal right (unless those unofficial clients cause harm to the respective service, but existing laws/regulations around that would already cover such cases). That doesn't mean the service has to specifically support the unofficial client, but they just can't intentionally block it (or forbid its use).
I am pretty certain that I can prove any client as harmful. I have been on the receiving end of apps misbehaving plenty of times, no matter which platform (JS, iOS, Android). And these were official apps with dedicated development teams.
Endless loops which flood you with API calls are a common issue, managing state is hard. Rate-limiting does not completely solve this.
Plus you can land in a situation where a user might associate bad experiences with an unofficial client with the actual service and thus leave with a bad impression overall.
This is the same argument AT&T used to forbid third party telephones on their network. It didn’t convince then, and it does not convince now. Tolerating third party clients should just be part of the cost of doing business and part of the design of robust protocols.
Doesn't your API have a problem if it can be misused that way? In other words, shouldn't your backend by default distrust the client using its API, no matter whether it's the official one or anything else? Even the official client can have bugs that bring down your backend.
it sucks that you could be sued if you are using a "public" api like this to write a client.
I would like to think that as long as you do not brand yourself as slack or violate any trademarks, you should be able to write an app like this. Things like email clients would fall into this category.
The point is it's not fair that Terms of Service can impose that restriction. Just like it wasn't fair when you were only allowed to use phones that you rented from your phone company.
Why isn't it fair? They run the service. What gives other people the right to tell them how to run it? If you don't like their terms, there are about 100 alternative projects you can use.
There are pretty clear, practical reasons you might want to control the client of a commercial network service.
Phone companies are different in that they were monopolies with special legal status. Slack, on the other hand, is just one of many private companies offering roughly equivalent services.
You can still argue your case, of course, but phone companies are a bad analogy here.
The phone company is the sole-source provider and you couldn't opt for another platform. The more relevant analogy is soda fountains in a restaurant - the provider chose Coke, but I want Pepsi. (My OSS founder wanted Slack, I want discord.)
That's a different medium, although I understand your point: Slack is the sole source provider of communicating on the Slack network. Personally, I don't think this is a problem or should be fixed because of how I see the tradeoffs and side effects. Similarly, I want Apple to run their own app store and not allow sideloading because I prefer the set of tradeoffs that come with that, versus the other reality.
The value of Slack Inc is their API, which is currently de-facto locked to their client. People would still pay for Slack if they could use alternative clients, because the client is not the value.
You can argue that their client is not as good as it could be, that you have greater skills to deliver a better product, etc. But it has value, otherwise we'd all be using curl to access the Slack API with no downsides. That's clearly not the case by far.
i do agree it's fair, but it's also true that the service provider could argue that they are supposed to be in total control of the service, including the front-end.
It's by societal consensus that this can be made fair, and to convince people that it is fair, there needs to be a logical, indisputable argument that it's fair. Otherwise, the service providers can always just hide behind the counter-argument of being in control and TOS etc.
In the case of Discord, for example, the terms of service doesn't even mention third-party clients. Also, these services are accessible from web browsers, which are made by third parties. There are more reasons, like users being able to run whatever they want on their own computers, but just the ones above are enough.
Ripcord isn't a derivative work, both practically and in the legal sense. It's implemented from scratch. Ripcord isn't a resell of their service or a sublicense of their service.
I assume your argument is that Slack has the "freedom of contract", the right to create and offer you contracts of their choosing (and you are free to accept or decline them). That right is not absolute. Workers rights limit it, sanctions limit it, cartel and competition laws limit it. There is no reason society can't agree to limit the options of keeping an API locked down in such contracts, especially for well established companies like Slack.
And I think the advantages of such a law are very clear: More competition on front-ends could very likely create much better user experience (better organization of chats, better message and image editor, better notifications, show users whether messages have actually been sent).
Laws are made to serve the public [1]. Being nice to companies is a means to an end, not the goal itself, and the discussion about whether API should be legally accessible to third party vendors (or devices/cars/… should be legally repairable by third party repair shops) should focus on whether we get better user experience, service, and so on, and have the question of whether companies will still want to offer backend-service like Slack under such a law as a facet.
[1] At least they should be and everybody complaints when they aren't.
IMO lawsuits are less of a concern than your end users getting banned, especially since slack is typically used for work. If your existing customers are loudly angry about you in public it's gonna make it hard to get new ones
I would be confused as to how an add-on service such as a premium Slack client would compete with Slack. It seems it would be complementing it and the use of the client would not compete but fundamentally cooperate with Slack as a service.
Sincere question: is an alternate app competing with Slack’s services? We pay for each user who uses Slack, whether it’s by phone, desktop, or web. The client is 100% free; the right to connect to their service is what costs money. Slack makes exactly the same whether I use their app or an alternative.
I’m definitely not a lawyer, but it’s not clear to me that this would violate the ToS.
You keep commenting one-line sentences without any argument supporting your sentence. You may even be right, but am I supposed to blindly trust you, a random commenter from the internet?
I mean, you don't have to. I appreciate the skepticism. I am the actual author of Ripcord. I've had an account here for many years. You will not find someone with better firsthand knowledge about Ripcord surviving or not surviving legal challenges.
I'd be interested to hear more about what sort of challenges you have faced, and if/how you responded to them, if you have the time.
Regardless of the upthread "well, just switch [your company/government/entire friend network] to an open/permissive service" non-answer, I think there's going to be ever-more need for unofficial clients for some of these services, and a big part of that is going to be how to avoid having them shut down immediately by service providers...
They are based in Germany. They would need to be sued in Germany. Germany has legal insurance where you can get insurance and it will cover your legal bills and liabilites. On top of that Germany has legal restrictions on how much a case can cost. Slack/Saleforce would not have much benefit in a legal challenge due to their size and legal costs. Furthermore, Slack would have to have a legal case. Which they most likely won't have.
I was trying to remember the name of ripcord while reading this. Thanks. I used it for a while for both slack and discord and it wasn’t bad. However they did sell licenses. I just don’t think they required them. I just double checked and I bought a $20 license for it. Good software and definitely worth it as far as I was concerned.
hopefully people at Slack are smart and they hire the dude
but since they spit buggy electron shit for decade already, i think you are right, they'll do everything possible to shut this down and keep with their inefficient and bloated electron way
I wouldn't be so sure. IRCCloud offers Slack connectivity (using Slack's API, not the IRC bridge that was closed long ago) and it costs money. I've used it for a couple of years now.
To be fair, I'd love to see a case like this brought to court. I'm not sure there's great precedent here. I think a case could be made that Slack was not harmed through this work.
I'd like to hear a lawyer (HN has several) corroborate this "Slack must articulate harm" claim, because there is a whole branch of civil law that exists to enforce contracts in the absence of torts; as I understand it, it's called "contract law".
This is true, and not all contracts are valid. It's why I'd love to see a good case brought. I feel like every time this happens the little guy just folds instead of doubling down.
But agree, would love to see some lawyers weigh in.
This is just wrong lol. Cancel has never received C&D orders for Ripcord, and it does charge $20 for the Slack features. Please don't spread misinformation you're not even informed correctly on, dude. If they were going to order a C&D order to Cancel, then they would've done it around the project's start (around 6ish years ago). Actually research this stuff before posting posts like these, plz.
> Over the years I've found writing on HackerNews, Reddit and other online sites has given me an outlet to get creative and engage with folks in a way that will shift discourse towards something I'm more interested in.
I regularly lie and pretend I know about topics and areas I have zero experience in. I began noticing I received more upvotes and engagement
Should clarify: the comment above me by @amedvednikov is referring to this comment chain's original poster -- @Mandatum -- not the parent or link submitter, and the post mentioned is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30838788
Ah, ok, I would call that a “submission” but it’s an “Ask HN” so I see where you came up with “post”.
Note that the submission page is sorted chronologically, not by karma. So the concept of “top” is really more like “first”.
It seems you meant to point out that @Mandatum admitted to lying but the way you phrased it really made it difficult to verify the claim and came across to me like you were accusing @jessefied123.
There were some very strong responses [1] to your accusation and I’m concerned that anger may be directed at the wrong person. When making these kinds of accusations you should try to be more clear. Use names and provide links. Also consider if the benefit of the accusation is worth the risk of misunderstanding.
