17 ms·

Bye bye BetterSlack

• pankajdoharey 8y ago
  There are tons of hosted alteratives to Slack, a good one is mattermost. Why bother with slack? It is better to say Bye Bye Slack.
• throwaway_19sz 8y ago
  I would write back to them very politely, something like this: Hello, Thank you for your email. I initially reacted by pulling the extension, in fear of possible legal consequences. But on reflection I would like to propose a better solution. There are hundreds of extensions that customise websites, in many cases to help 'power users', or to assist people with accessibility problems not provided for by the websites themselves. These extensions are often made by the websites' most avid users. A great example is the Refined GitHub extension, which GitHub itself has embraced as a proving ground and source of inspiration for new official features. [1][2] That said, it is of course vital that people understand that such extensions are unofficial, and that they are unsupported and not endorsed by the website owner. I would like to notify you of my intent to republish my extension with the changes outlined below, which I hope will satisfy your concerns. • New extension title: "BetterSlack: Unofficial customizations for Slack" • Modify store description to include an explicit warning that installation and use of the extension is at your own risk, and is not endorsed in any way by Slack, and that Slack offers no support for it. In the interests of transparency I will publish all of our correspondence on my blog, as I think this is an important issue of interest to the wider community concerning the rights of individuals to control their own computers and customise their own experiences. Best regards, ... [1] https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github/issues/1469 https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github/issues/1469 [2] https://blog.github.com/2018-08-28-announcing-paper-cuts/ https://blog.github.com/2018-08-28-announcing-paper-cuts/
• adem666 8y ago
  really cool approach by slack. create an environment to look nice to open source community, and make it a commercial, and then close itself to open source. great job slack!
• dal 8y ago
  This is why you should not use Slack. Open protocols with open servers/clients is what we need such as IRC, Matrix or XMPP. Slack removed the IRC gateway just so they can stop people from using the service as they see fit and instead force on the users what they think it should be.
• ajambrovic 8y ago
  I totally agree you should conform to their request - remove the extension from the store(s?) and remove Slack from the name. That said, if you can keep the code on GitHub, then everyone can download the zip and load the unpacked extension - you could even go one up and create a (shell?) script with a cron job that checks the diff e.g. once per day and updates the unpacked extension. With our without the script, there's a slight overhead for the end user, but as long as benefits outweigh the overhead, people will use it and everyone will be happy (or at least, not be able to do anything about it :D )
• rileyt 8y ago
  I just release a similar extension that I'd love feedback on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17877737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17877737 It's focused on simplifying Slack's interface so that it's easier to focus. It also only uses CSS and doesn't interact with Slack at all, so it is not against their terms of service.
• kuon 8y ago
  As a riot.im user, I hope it will become a bigger player in the open source space, I am a bit sick of slack for various reasons.
  • katheriin 8y ago
    Just out of curiosity, why riot.im out of all the open source alternatives to Slack and similar tools?
    • kuon 8y ago
      Because of the matrix.org foundations.
• danmg 8y ago
  Slack has really jumped the shark. Between this and their cutting off their IRC gateway, I don't really see the point of using it. You can't be openly hostile to people who create "hacks" like this if you're claiming to be a communication medium for "hackers."
  • lillesvin 8y ago
    Not to mention that while Slack still has a web interface, they can't really expect to control what extensions are installed in the user's browser and how they render/modify the data the website is sending them. That'd be like Reddit or Google sending uBlock Origin a C&D because it can block ads on their sites. Or SalesForce C&D'ing whoever did an extension that implemented XKCD's force/horse replacement (https://xkcd.com/1418/ https://xkcd.com/1418/). Slack can shut off their web interface and rely on their own apps if they want to control that stuff.
  • gandreani 8y ago
    Slack is no longer for "hackers". It's mainstream now. My company of 500 with only 30 devs uses it. These are power moves by Slack. They want to have greater control over the communication medium and presentation If you thought they were ever going to support extensions of their IRC gateway for long, then you misunderstood their product and who their market was or rather who their market became
    • as1mov 8y ago
      > My company of 500 with only 30 devs uses it. Same at my workplace. Slack is mostly used by the managers, all the devs avoid it. Even if you don't mind the proprietory protocol, the performance even on beefy machines is an absolute dumpster fire, that nobody wants to touch the app with a ten foot pole.
      • pkaye 8y ago
        Its the opposite at my workplace. Mostly the developers use Slack. What do your devs use instead?
• degenerate 8y ago
  So it lasted 3 days? https://g3rv4.com/2018/08/betterslack https://g3rv4.com/2018/08/betterslack From that post: > I may build an Electron app that patches the Electron app… so far, that’s what makes the most sense to me. But we’ll see. Even if this was against the ToS, could it be stopped? I didn't know one Electron app could target the other.
  • neonate 8y ago
    Maybe the "legal team" saw it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17850932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17850932.
    • g3rv4 8y ago
      probably... I certainly didn't want to hide anything
      • neonate 8y ago
        Now they can have their comeuppance with this one.
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    no, it can't be stopped technically. But I know I don't want to mess with them.
  • derefr 8y ago
    > I didn't know one Electron app could target the other. An Electron app consists of two parts: HTML5 (which can run Javascript, but within a browser-like sandbox), and native Javascript code, running under Node.js with no sandbox whatsoever. The native half of an Electron app can do anything to your filesystem (including the parts that contain other applications) that any other native app can do.
    • rmrfrmrf 8y ago
      I'm not sure how easy that would be since you're dealing with ASAR (just a binary encoding but definitely not as easy as modifying plain JS files) and code signing.
• ProAm 8y ago
  It's a shame because Slack is so painful. Reminds me of Twitter fighting 3rd party clients.
• Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  Folks, use IRC, XMPP, Matrix, etc. Using proprietary protocols is dumb.
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    I wish it was so easy... I don't get to decide what tools my company uses unfortunately
  • canadaduane 8y ago
    I worked at a medium-sized company during the transition from IRC to Slack. The problem the company had was a split in comms networks. There was a lack of will on the part of engineers to move to GChat, and non-engineers were unwilling to respond/engage on IRC. Marketing, Sales, and Admin were using GChat, while engineering used IRC. Getting everyone on the same comms platform was a major improvement. I'm not saying it's ideal, but it wasn't dumb.
    • u801e 8y ago
      This is largely the same rational that was used at the company I work at to transition to Slack. From an engineer and developer point of view, I rarely, if ever, directly communicate with non-engineers over instant messaging. For people who deal with different groups of people in the company, shouldn't it be up to them to handle communicating with different groups using different methods rather than compelling everyone to use the same communication platform for instant messaging?
    • g3rv4 8y ago
      lol... it rings a bell
    • sofaofthedamned 8y ago
      I worked at Cisco, who had their own awful IM client. Our team used Hangouts instead with great success. Company-wide conferences were a ball-ache. The corporate solution didn't mute by default, so with 40000 people in a conf it devolved into a "TURN YOUR MIC OFF" shouting match for the first 10 minutes.
• comesee 8y ago
  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.
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    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.
    • splatzone 8y ago
      Could they really sue you for creating a chrome extension that modifies their webpage? That would be a very dark day for the internet. I can't imagine there's any legal basis for that, but it would be very interesting to hear a lawyer's opinion. Well done on what you have achieved, keep fighting the good fight!
      • calgoo 8y ago
        I dont think they can, or all the adblockers would have been removed already.
        • rovr138 8y ago
          Any extension that Interacts with pages. I have so many of them. Vimium injects itself onto every page.
      • TehCorwiz 8y ago
        (Goes without saying, but IANAL) It's my understanding that in the US you can be sued by anyone for anything. That doesn't mean the case has merit, but it does mean you're obligated to defend yourself or lose by default. This is often the mechanism by which patent/copyright trolls put pressure on their 'mark.' It sounds like the plugin author isn't located in the US, so this may be moot, but countries colonized or invaded by European countries or the US often have similar legal systems. I doubt they'd win in a fair fight, but I also doubt the plugin author can afford to put up a fair fight.
• dasmoth 8y ago
  I wonder how much longer Slack’s web client is going to remain a first class product? Clearly, it was a good way to drive adoption, but seems that at this point they want ever more control.
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    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.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • dwighttk 8y ago
      Anything that moves away from Electron is a plus in my book
    • chipotle_coyote 8y ago
      I'd love a better-performing, less memory-intensive and, well, more native Slack app; I'm all for that part. The "harder to mess with" part is a little more concerning. (I didn't catch the original mention of BetterSlack a few days ago, so ironically, your "Welp, gotta withdraw this!" message here is the first I've heard of it. This seems to be my usual timing with such things, though...)
    • saagarjha 8y ago
      > 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 thorough a bunch of broken CSS (for IE 6 support) and minified goop.
      • g3rv4 8y ago
• alien1993 8y ago
  I understand the naming issue but from the look of it the extension only works locally, where's the issue with that?
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    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.
    • saagarjha 8y ago
      But I do this already with an ad blocker…
    • byte1918 8y ago
      > 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.
      • thebaer 8y ago
        ...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...
    • alien1993 8y ago
      Don't think they can enforce this at all, I would just change the name and call it a day. The burden is on you though, certainly no one can force you to make decisions. :)
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
• whoisjuan 8y ago
  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.
  • pvg 8y ago
    You won't be able to tell your lawyer "this is no different than paying you with real money" and hand over a stack of monopoly banknotes. Legal advice by analogy is unlikely to be all that useful.
    • chadash 8y ago
      Analogies are used all the time in legal decisions. You'll find them regularly in supreme court opinions, for example. Anytime something that has never been seen is litigated, it's likely that analogies will be made to figure out the law [1]. I think the real lesson is "don't take legal advice from internet forums of non-lawyers", or at least take it with a grain of salt. Not all analogies are equally good and only a qualified lawyer is gonna know which analogies will fly in court. [1] Here's a fun analogy in a tort law case cited at https://cyber.harvard.edu/bridge/Analogy/analogy3.htm https://cyber.harvard.edu/bridge/Analogy/analogy3.htm: In Adams v. New Jersey Steamboat Co., a steamboat passenger sued the owner after the theft of valuables from the rented cabin; neither passenger nor owner had been negligent. The passenger claimed the owner nonetheless was strictly responsible, regardless of any failure or compliance with care, in light of prior case ruling that innkeepers were strictly liable for the theft of boarders' valuables. The owner argued against strict liability and pointed to precedents rejecting liability claims by passengers on open-berth sleeping trains. For purposes of liability for theft from a passenger, should the steamboat owner be viewed as more like the innkeeper or more like the train owner? The court reasoned that "A steamer carrying passengers upon the water, and furnishing them with rooms and entertainment, is, for all practical purposes, a floating inn, and hence the duties which the proprietors owe to the passengers in their charge ought to be the same." The court noted that both innkeepers and steamboat operators are entrusted with high levels of confidence in the face of temptations by many to endanger guests. Given this parallel relationship to guests, innkeepers and steamboat operators should bear the same kinds of duties to guests.
• castis 8y ago
  While I completely understand your decision to pull it; both their decision to flex their legal arm and your decision to not stand your ground are equally disappointing.
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    I guess... I'm sorry? and I'll try to do better next time, I promise.
    • phailhaus 8y ago
      How dare you choose not to put yourself in legal jeopardy for the sake of random people on the internet! Please feel free to ignore everyone here. You made a Cool Thing, it didn't work out, whatever. You'll probably make more Cool Things in the future and I hope they'll stick!
      • g3rv4 8y ago
        <3 thanks :) yes, it’s particularly hard because I’ve never disappointed anyone before :P
    • iamthirsty 8y ago
      > I'll try to do better next time, I promise. Not to be mean, but there isn't a next time. You could still stand you ground now — you haven't removed it yet, and still don't have to.
    • castis 8y ago
      Although you owe me nothing, if this were possible, an apology wouldn't be necessary.
    • _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      I don't think we need people who can actually create things to waste time in bureaucratic legal battles. Go make other things; there's obviously no way to make Slack better.
  • 8y ago
• EduardoBautista 8y ago
  So I don't live in the USA. Can I fork it, rename it, and release it?
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    yup
  • LinuxBender 8y ago
    It is on Github [1] [1] - https://github.com/g3rv4/BetterSlack https://github.com/g3rv4/BetterSlack
  • Tehnix 8y ago
    For everyone complaining about g3rv4 not (very understandably) taking a stand against slack, I'd advise you to clone it, and keep it live. That way we remove focus from g3rv4, but we keep alive the great extension that he built. (I'm not in a country that would take Slack's illegitimate takedown seriously).
• nsarafa 8y ago
  One 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.
  • saagarjha 8y ago
    Except, of course, for the fact that sending a cease and desist in this case wasn't particularly nice.
    • TylerE 8y ago
      Well, I mean they are under no obligation to send a C&D. They could have gone right to a Trademark suit.
      • saagarjha 8y ago
        Which would normally cost them must more money. Cease and desists are an easy way to scare people when you don't have much of a case.
  • parliament32 8y ago
    >providing guidence on changing the functionality to comply with their api Nice or not, that isn't what this is about at all. They effectively told the dev he's not allowed to do what he's doing -- their api doesn't support anything the author changed. Seems they just linked to their api docs for giggles.
  • splatzone 8y ago
    No, they're bullying a developer who created something useful so they can keep control of their product. They're misleading him by saying that building a Chrome extension for a website somehow makes you agree with that website's Acceptable Use Policy They didn't provide any real guidance, there's no way the extension could work using the official API.
  • 8y ago
• saagarjha 8y ago
  > In order to remedy this, we ask that you please modify your product so that you are not forcing your own code into our services. We have opened a number of channels for the developer community to build tools that improve their experience with Slack. We encourage you to utilize those channels to their fullest extent. Except that these channels make it impossible to really interact with Slack, and they pulled the rug out from under the APIs that used to kinda make this possible (XMPP/IRC integration). If you're going to force people to use your client, then you should allow for users to customize how that client looks and feels. Even more so if you're doing a terrible job at that yourself.
  • imhoguy 8y ago
    This. How many "Slack dark mode" haxtensions need to be made? I don't need more emoticon skin tones bloat. I need to save my eyes with hours in this productivity tool forced by my workplace. Slack Team, just listen to the market (hint: HN score!) and bring such guys like OP into a gig to improve your stuff.
    • facetube 8y ago
      This. Who the hell goes to legal and creates PR risk instead of just hiring the dude?
• tdewitt 8y ago
  You solved on of my biggest gripes (muting spam) and a few others I didn't even know I had. Thanks for doing this. I grabbed a fork for myself. Definitely a big middle finger from Slack to the developer community and when I'm the one making the decisions, I'll be recommending people skip Slack. They mostly lost me when they killed the IRC gateway but they added another nail to the coffin with this.
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    <3
  • facetube 8y ago
    Yep, dead to me too. I decide what code runs on my hardware.
• craigsmansion 8y ago
  "we prefer that you do not include the word “Slack” in your product’s name." From the people who had no problems naming their product identical to the colloquial name of the oldest maintained GNU/Linux distribution, thereby confusing the hell out of actual technical people for the longest time with press releases. Also, Bob Dobbs called... (Edit: you can take away my upticks, but you will never take away my slack. "Hacker" news my ass.)
  • giancarlostoro 8y ago
    Not sure I was ever confused by Slack's name, I just never knew what it was for ages until finally I used it, and after seeing the name crop up on HN so often I had to eventually look for myself.
  • toyg 8y ago
    I suspect the real beef is with the name. In one swoop, it dilutes their trademark and makes the case that Slack is inferior to something else. Big no-no. I bet the Slack top brass just told legal to throw the book at the guy because of the name, and so they padded the letter with everything they could find, including weak technical arguments that they don't even enforce on others. (I agree on the confusion with Slackware btw, it took me a while to realize they had no connection whatsover with Volkerding or the distro.)
  • throwawaymath 8y ago
    I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you're in the extreme minority if you honestly confused Slack the chat client for Slackware the Linux distribution. That's...a leap. Frankly the origin of Slack's name has nothing to do with Slackware Linux (or Linux in general) so I'm having difficulty following your grievance here.
    • lillesvin 8y ago
      I hadn't heard about Slack until I started in my current job (4 years ago) and when they told me that Slack was among their commonly used tools I immediately thought they were talking about Slackware and said I was surprised anyone was still using it. Came off as a total "bleeding edge" snob/hipster until we figured out what was happening.
• subway 8y ago
  Here's a spiffy new fork: https://github.com/betterlimp/betterlimp https://github.com/betterlimp/betterlimp
  • tspike 8y ago
    I see you've taken it down. Also bullied?
    • subway 8y ago
      No -- the original author is continuing to maintain BetterSlack as BitterSweet, albeit without publishing to the Chrome store. https://github.com/g3rv4/BitterSweet https://github.com/g3rv4/BitterSweet I felt it was better to unpublish my (likely to be unmaintained) fork. Probably should have left up a note to redirect folks.
  • userbinator 8y ago
    The slogan should be "better Limp than never."
    • subway 8y ago
      I like it.
  • xtracto 8y ago
    Huge thanks for this. Made a fork myself. What is Slack thinking?
  • jgalentine007 8y ago
    Can't stop laughing right now.
    • sundvor 8y ago
      Haha, the diff on the package.json is brilliant!
• marsrover 8y ago
  Pretty moronic of Slack to try and take it down considering it just furthers their own product.
• ateesdalejr 8y ago
  > 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.
  • dagi3d 8y ago
    Hard to solve that if the browser allows that via the extensions mechanism.
    • Xylakant 8y ago
      If your security depends on people not using browser features, maybe don’t use a browser then. Ultimately, if your security depends on the client being unmodified, you basically lost. You can make it harder for an attacker, but that’s the problem DRM tries to solve (and consistently fails to)
    • TeMPOraL 8y ago
      But that's utterly ridiculous. All the data Slack sends to my browser is already mine to view, so if there's an issue of "privacy and security", it's on their end.
  • Qwertie 8y ago
    If I make a browser extension that grabs your auth token and all of your messages and sends it to my server. How is slack meant to fix that?
    • TheDong 8y ago
      I can ask you for your slack password, and you can then tell it to me. How can slack fix that? Any extension that asks for the permission to read data off webpages can read data off webpages, yes. It's the user's responsibility to not install such an extension, not the company's responsibility to do whatever the hell they're doing here. Anyways, this extension wasn't malicious. Its source code was available freely, and auditing it reveals nothing malicious.
• sbr464 8y ago
  Could Slack just defend against people doing this? Similar to how companies defend against Ad Blockers, Password Managers etc? Those also allow you to modify/tamper with elements, hide annoying things etc. Do you join lerna and block everyone now? I could agree with the name change, even if to not stir up a hornet's nest
  • shopkins 8y ago
    Much quicker to have the legal team fire off the standard email threat than get the dev team to reverse-engineer the extension and block it (if this wasn't just an automated email).
• scoom 8y ago
  Using slack was your first mistake.
• dionna767675 8y ago
  This is one of the top marketing business online Have you ever looked at sites like Google or Facebook and asked yourself…"How can they make SO MUCH MONEY when they aren't even really selling any products?!?!" Well, Google and Facebook are cashing in on their platforms; They're taking advantage of the millions of people who come to their sites for more information click below https://souniqueincome.com https://souniqueincome.com
• dude3 8y ago
  I hate these emails. Why do corporations have to be so heavy handed? How about just a nice message explaining the problem and possible solutions. Love to read about something like that! I now hope someone keeps slack’s legal department busy. The product sucks anyways. It was down yesterday and it’s a poor excuse for a reliable chat platform.
• jMyles 8y ago
  This is a threat of violence. Nothing less.
• joeblau 8y ago
  If you want to make a better version of Slack, go all the way.
• kodablah 8y ago
  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.
• robinhowlett 8y ago
  I got into a similar pickle recently and did some press about it: http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com/getting-from-cease-and-desist-to-come-work-with-us/ 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.
• donohoe 8y ago
  As a recipient of many C&Ds for browser extensions I'm off the opinion that you are fine to keep operating your extension, just change the name.
• gsich 8y ago
  >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.
• mesozoic 8y ago
  Not much ground for them to stand on on the first point. Any chrome extension does exactly the same thing they complain about.
• userbinator 8y ago
  except to the extent such restrictions are prohibited by applicable law ...and here is the key. AFAIK reverse-engineering for interoperability is protected in the EU. IANAL. As a long-time user (and developer) of web filtering proxies and related software, I also say you should fight this, because it otherwise sets a bad precedent. Viewing the source code of a webpage is not a crime, nor is changing bits in the memory of the hardware you own. Also, I know it's too late for that now, but sometimes it's better to be pseudoanonymous when releasing software that you think is somewhat in the gray area.
• miles_matthias 8y ago
  We ran into this when we launched AtomicSlack, a digest summary tool for Slack groups. Yet another reason I stay away from Slack.
• joewadcan 8y ago
  At GitHub, we faced the same issue when ZenHub [1] came out with their chrome extension. While, Slack is well within their rights to _ask_ you not to modify their user experience, it's short sighted of them to do so. With ZenHub, we worked with them even closer because we saw that our users were happier using GitHub + ZenHub. We made it super clear that UI changes would likely break their app but that would be a risk for them to evaluate. In the end, it worked out well since ZenHub invested alot in their UI and became a long term partner of GitHub's. From a technical level, I'd also take issue with this. You're customizing the output of their services once it's in the browser at the request of the user. If you're still interacting with Slack through the API and being a good platform partner (i.e. respecting rate limits), then I think you should be allowed to keep on. Disclaimer: I'm running a company on the Slack platform [2] [1] https://www.zenhub.com/ https://www.zenhub.com/ [2] https://geteventbot.com/ https://geteventbot.com/
  • 2sk21 8y ago
    Really happy to hear that ZenHub has an official relationship with GitHub. We use the combo in my company and think that they work remarkably well together
  • briandear 8y ago
    I used ZenHub for a long time, but being forced to use Chrome was a dealbreaker for me.
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    I’m not being a good platform partner basically because they make it impossible for me to be one. I’d love to avoid reverse engineering their minified code and use well documented APIs. Unfortunately, that’s not possible nor planned (as they told me on a tweet I linked on the post).
    • wpietri 8y ago
      I really feel both sides of this. On the one hand, I like customizing things, and I love to see users getting involved in platforms they love. On the other, I see how responsibly providing APIs is a big long-term burden that can prevent internal innovation. I was talking a while back with some Mozilla people about the move from their legacy API [1] to WebExtensions [2]. It was a giant pain, but their old API exposed way too much surface area in ways that were too closely tied to the original implementation. The way I heard there were significant ongoing costs in trying to maintain the old API and support popular extensions while trying to improve the underlying tech and the user experience. So I get why Slack is very reluctant to expose API surface area, especially for the UI. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Add-ons/Legacy_add_ons https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Add-ons/Leg... [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
• chippy 8y ago
  Slack desktop app is Electron, right? This might be a stupid question (it's been downvoted before), but can a user run chrome extensions within Electron apps? Or a debugger? If not, could a simple website wrapper electron app therefore be much more favourable for a company to run whatever scripts, tracking, and adverts than the same website? Can the same be said for Progressive Web Apps for mobile?
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    I was able to attach a debugger on any app that I’ve tried. I’ll share how to do it in an upcoming blogpost... all you need is asar and open the debugger after a reasonable timeout.
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    I was even thinking about shipping an app that tweaked the Slack app for you, but after this experience (and since I don’t really use it) it’s not worth the effort.
• 013a 8y ago
  How is an acceptable use policy even relevant to the developer of this application? Its the users of the app who would be breaking the policy. At worst they can argue that he broke it while developing it... so they can go ahead and shut down his Slack account. Totally fair. Change the name, obviously. But fuck these companies like Slack who think they run the world and that gives them the power to control what code you run on your computer.
  • erik_seaberg 8y ago
    IANAL but there's case law around maliciously causing a breach of contract. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference
    • 013a 8y ago
      IANAL either, but it seems like that only applies in the case of malicious action on behalf of the accused toward the contract signatory; essentially coercion.
• edhelas 8y ago
  …or maybe just stop trying to play with the cat tail if you don't want to get scratched. There is plenty of solutions out there to do chat messaging "kinda like" or maybe better than Slack. I'm using Slack daily and I can't find what this platform has something so magical about it. I am personally building a communication client that can do IM, video-conferencing, file sharing, posting articles… all based on XMPP. It works in the browsers and we are proposing now apps for Android and macOS/Windows/Linux. It's way lighter than Slack, can be deployed easily on a VPS or in your company and is fully compatible with many other XMPP clients/bots (Github is proposing a XMPP bot for MUCs for example :)). If you want to try it out or know more: https://movim.eu https://movim.eu. If you don't like Movim, I still invite you to find open platforms that can be tuned/hacked/adapted to your needs, there's plenty of them in the wild ;)
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    I’d really like to give zulip a try... unfortunately, I don’t have voice or vote over that decision on my company. Also, I love the company too much to resign over a such a small thing that can be fixed with a 20kb extension.
    • Pistos2 8y ago
      I like what Zulip tries to be in theory (the "topics" feature is really great), but there are two knocks against it, in my opinion: 1. They do not support self-hosting the code on a system with anything else hosted on it. You are strongly recommended to dedicate a server (VPS, Docker, whatever) to your Zulip installation. You can try to install it on an existing server, but it is far from trivial, and doing so is unsupported. 2. As part of the installation script(s), they blindly wget code and execute it with bash. https://github.com/zulip/zulip/blob/eb676e8e508df0349662addd6245ebf7ab235744/scripts/lib/install-node#L35 https://github.com/zulip/zulip/blob/eb676e8e508df0349662addd...
• jrochkind1 8y ago
  Hmm. Can website acceptable use policies really prevent you from distributing/using browser extensions? Do we really not control our own browsers anymore?
  • Rapzid 8y ago
    I highly doubt it, particularly in the absence of any legal precedence.. I'm vaguely aware of a couple cases where EUAs were enforced, but I believe they were in the context of avoiding monetary compensation.
• lbj 8y ago
  If someone made a Chrome extension which enhanced our users experience of SabreCMS I'd send them a wholehearted thankyou and probably try to hire them.
• noir_lord 8y ago
  We canceled Slack in July, let the year run out and didn't renew. Simply wasn't worth it and frankly more of a distraction than just using Trello (and the client on Linux was just a fucking ballache).
• garmaine 8y ago
  Note to self: never use Slack for anything, ever. Way to go Slack legal dude, you’ve lost me and my companies as a customer.
• garmaine 8y ago
  OP: since Slack is saying they own the execution environment running in your browser, send them a hosting bill for running their application in your computers. Multiply it times every user on your instance.
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    lol, wouldn't it be funny?
• pdfernhout 8y ago
  From something I wrote in January 2016 (just one concern of many): "Reasons Not to Use Slack for Free Software Development" https://pdfernhout.net/reasons-not-to-use-slack-for-free-software-development.html https://pdfernhout.net/reasons-not-to-use-slack-for-free-sof... "Slack requires signing up and agreeing with a long Terms of Service (TOS); the TOS can be changed at any time, and historically such TOS have changed for the worse over time for other services once a lot of users adopt the service and become locked in by inertia and interlocking usages with other groups."
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    wow... you turned down an interview at a place you liked because of their tools? you certainly have stronger feelings about it than I do :)
    • pdfernhout 8y ago
      I guess I did not explain that clearly enough in the essay. The issue was not using Slack in itself. I've unfortunately had to use a bunch of proprietary tools and hardware over the years, and in fact (unfortunately) I use Slack where I work now. The issue was that Automattic, the company behind the FOSS WordPress software, was moving from open solutions to use proprietary Slack. That included moving away from FOSS ones they made themselves in-house like o2 ( https://github.com/Automattic/o2 https://github.com/Automattic/o2 ). And that disappointing choice by Automattic to embrace proprietary communications tools seemed in conflict with my hope to have made WordPress into a better FOSS communications platform while working there. I also did not feel it boded well for the company itself -- since Automattic seemed to be narrowing its business ideals from supporting and expanding the single biggest FOSS communications platform on Earth in terms of hosting much of the web to becoming essentially just another WIX competitor.
  • worik 8y ago
    * Privacy policy does not seem to prohibit much data mining That, data mining, must be part of the business case. Especially the friend maps they can generate.
• worik 8y ago
  Why Slack? Why are their services used by anybody? It is like IRC never happened. I have been on a couple of projects that used Slack and AFAICT there is nothing in their service that accounts for them being a hugely successful business.
• qwerty456127 8y ago
  I could hardly understand why do people use Slack at all. Once I've read the BetterSlack features list I've came up wit the idea that perhaps it could make Slack useful and I might re-visit it. Such a waste.
• fiatjaf 8y ago
  That's ridiculous. It's your browser running your extension, you're interacting with Slack in a way they allow (downloading their HTML and JS and talking to whatever internal API they use). How in the world they can prevent you from doing that?
• AlphaWeaver 8y ago
  I think it's really dangerous to choose to take Slack's message seriously here. I've been working on a WebExtension recently [0] at my university that's entire existence is staked on continuing to improve on platforms that are slow moving, and to tie together platforms that otherwise wouldn't talk to each other for political reasons. A company making the case that their Terms of Service or definition of Acceptable Use applies to users manipulating the data that is sent once it is in the user's browser is a terrible way to go. We should always have the tools and the means to add features and change the display format of data being sent to us. [0]: https://homeworkhomie.com https://homeworkhomie.com
• kerng 8y ago
  That's unfortunate, the only feedback I'd have for the creator who did a lot of good and with good intentions too I believe, is to pick a different, less "confrontational" name when doing stuff like this. Slack is now just being defensive.
• sbr464 8y ago
  I personally would 100% ignore their letter. Create an LLC, change the name, as you should. But always, always hack the planet.
• hokus 8y ago
  guys! IRC still works!
• halr9000 8y ago
  Super polite legal notice tho!
• State_Of_Mind 8y ago
  Hey g3rv4 sorry to hear the news. Although I personally don't use slack, when I saw your last post (congrats on the double front page btw) I was super impressed by the stuff you'd added, sorry to see it go. So this seems rather unfortunate now but the first thought I had on reading your initial post was "wow, I wish he'd come and do some similar stuff for riot[1], but unless slack shut him down there's no chance." However lo and behold here we are, so I thought I might as well reach out. If you haven't heard of it, Riot can be described as "an open source slack" although I think that's unfair on it, it certainly lacks certain features that slack has (although with its current rate of development this gap is shrinking) but also can do things slack just can't. Full disclaimer I'm not a developer on riot (or matrix[2] the open protocol it implements), just a happy user so I can't speak with true authority but I think they'd be happy for you to make these sorts of changes to riot. So I invite you to come check it out, I hope you find it compelling. At the very least riot has a means of bridging to slack (along with irc, gitter and more) which you might find helpful in dealing with slack (I know I do). Hope your future endeavors so smoother, I look forward to seeing whatever you create next. [1]https://riot.im/ https://riot.im/ [2]https://matrix.org/blog/home/ https://matrix.org/blog/home/
  • anderspitman 8y ago
    I am a very happy Riot/Matrix user. Commercial software has a place. I think for things like Photoshop it can make sense. It's a complicated and powerful system. I just can't justify closed source software for a chat application. They are fundamentally simple systems. We CAN build competitive open source alternatives. Eventually companies have to make money, and all the approaches I've seen for that go against the user.
  • g3rv4 8y ago
    woooooowwwwwww so... I could use riot to connect to my company’s slack? that’s a dream come true!!! I’ll def check it out
    • State_Of_Mind 8y ago
      I'll be honest, I don't have a huge amount of experience using it, never to a company slack sort of thing and there may be some company policy about this sort of thing (security and all that) so I'd encourage checking there but I hope it works out!
• enriquto 8y ago
  When you read these bully letters you see the real, rotten soul of these callous companies.
• indysigners 8y ago
  This is such a big shame, especially since the native Slack app is consuming such a lot of processor and battery power and it runs much more efficiently in the browser!
• doesnt_know 8y ago
  Has anything like this ever been hashed out in court? I'm curious where the line is from a legal perspective? Ad blocker (purposely deny some scripts from running)? Custom user styling? User scripts (greasemonkey/tamper monkey etc), browser "reader views"? Accessibility tools? The browser dev tools?
• r1b 8y ago
  Build protocols - not platforms
• kristianov 8y ago
  Maybe MoreoftheSameSlack.
• wemdyjreichert 8y ago
  Mirror of the extension: https://my.mixtape.moe/byutfi.crx https://my.mixtape.moe/byutfi.crx I hate censorship. This isn't any kind of illegal (though the name I can understand, if not agree with). Hopefully Slack recants for being a bunch of twitbrains.
• chubs 8y ago
  I've been working on and off on a native macOS slack client. It's showing some promise in terms of speed, RAM usage, it looks prettier because it can use system blurs etc. But yeah i also worry about their lawyers. So i probably won't finish it. Pity.
• Qwertie 8y ago
  If this threat is legally valid, doesn't that mean all adblockers/tracker blockers could be made illegal?
• DigitalSea 8y ago
  This situation all but confirms that Slack has well and truly become a investor-first, user-second company. Which is a shame because I only just finished listening to an episode of "How I Built This" where they interview Stuart Butterfield who founded Slack out of his failed gaming company and it was a great story. When you have Fortune 500 companies using you, you know you're not a startup or company for the common folk anymore. As for hostility towards developers, we only have to look at how well that worked out for Twitter when they turned up hositility to 11 towards their developers. Different situation, but same premise of cutting off developers making your product better. As for Slack, I loved it in the early days. But now, I find is distracting. The numerous bots you can enable on it (most of which are counterproductive) are annoying or distracting (like the Gif bot). I dread opening up Slack because it's not a nicely designed product and it is starting to become dated. We've been using Microsoft Teams where I work and I must say that it is amazing. You get so much out-of-the-box with it without needing to add in bots and it's more customisable.
  • superkuh 8y ago
    > This situation all but confirms that Slack has well and truly become a investor-first, user-second company. You know how to predict if this will happen? It's pretty easy. It will if the company's product or service is proprietary and centralized. It's just a matter of time.
• rdl 8y ago
  Personally, I’d change the name and either not respond to them or send a “8====>~~~~” in response and continue. (Maybe change the name to “somewhat less abjectly shitty 90s chat monolith”)
• agentPrefect 8y ago
  That is sad! My condolences. That was a very well written letter from Slack and I completely agree with them, but unfortunate for BetterSlack nonetheless. Always room to pivot!
• User23 8y ago
  This is why you shouldn't use non-free software. Also reverse engineering for the purposes of compatibility is nominally legal in the USA, but like every other so-called right it's pay to play.
• ptman 8y ago
  There are already 3rd party Slack clients ( https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack https://github.com/bkanber/Slackadaisical https://github.com/bkanber/Slackadaisical https://github.com/evanyeung/terminal-slack https://github.com/evanyeung/terminal-slack ). Using the same approach as them would let you have more control. OTOH, like someone else said, please contribute to improving riot/matrix instead.
• profalseidol 8y ago
  > It is okay to be descriptive about what your product does, but we prefer that you do not include the word “Slack” in your product’s name. How about BetterSlacker? Or some synonym of Slack.
• yoz-y 8y ago
  After reading this I am quite glad that we made the decision to leave Slack in our company. Moves like these seem either desperate or disconnected from reality to me.
• axegon 8y ago
  And this is why I have private mattermost servers running - I can do whatever I want.
• sklivvz1971 8y ago
  All they can do is threaten or terminate your access. And even that is debatable. If I create a new browser with BetterStack as one of its features are they going to mandate which browsers I use? What monetary or image damage can they prove? None. I hope not, but one could argue that the adage that a quality of a product reflects the company that makes is indeed true...
• maxehmookau 8y ago
  When you're spending more time/money sending cease and desist to people trying to make your product better than _actually making your product better_, you need to re-evaluate your priorities as a business.