Bye bye BetterSlack

https://g3rv4.com/2018/08/bye-bye-betterslack

by g3rv4 • 8 years ago

839 383 8 years ago

danmg2• 8 years 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."

gandreani2• 8 years 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• 8 years 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.

Ekuju• 8 years ago

Out of curiosity, how do you feel about discord?

BeefySwain2• 8 years ago

Embrace Extend <- we are here Extinguish

tw04• 8 years ago

It worked out so well for Twitter, why not duplicate that success!

stock_toaster• 8 years ago

Agreed. This hostility towards users is ridiculous. As a current slack customer (50 or so person org), I will be investigating alternatives starting tomorrow.

lillesvin2• 8 years 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/).

Slack can shut off their web interface and rely on their own apps if they want to control that stuff.

degenerate• 8 years ago

So it lasted 3 days?

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.

neonate2• 8 years ago

Maybe the "legal team" saw it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17850932.

g3rv430• 8 years ago

probably... I certainly didn't want to hide anything

g3rv430• 8 years ago

no, it can't be stopped technically. But I know I don't want to mess with them.

derefr2• 8 years 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• 8 years 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.

kodablah6• 8 years ago

I didn't know one Electron app could target the other.

A year ago or so, I was able to start desktop Slack with a param to open the dev tools port open and use something like puppeteer to control it (at the least, I opened dev tools inside of Slack's Electron app). Not sure if that is still the case.

ProAm• 8 years ago

It's a shame because Slack is so painful. Reminds me of Twitter fighting 3rd party clients.

Sir_Cmpwn5• 8 years ago

Folks, use IRC, XMPP, Matrix, etc. Using proprietary protocols is dumb.

g3rv430• 8 years ago

I wish it was so easy... I don't get to decide what tools my company uses unfortunately

canadaduane2• 8 years 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.

g3rv430• 8 years ago

lol... it rings a bell

sofaofthedamned2• 8 years 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.

Sir_Cmpwn5• 8 years ago

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.

dvtrn2• 8 years ago

The problem the company had was a split in comms networks.

My new team is going through this. For comms, my machine came equipped with Skype for Business, Slack, Stride and Bria. It's a fun game rolling the dice when you need to ask someone a question figuring out which comms tool that person uses.

A game I've avoided playing altogether by just sending an email.

mst• 8 years ago

I confess that, overall, that's been my experience with a few customers and that getting everyone on the same platform was ace.

But as somebody who's got gchat gatewayed to IRC, replacing two things I can use from irssi with one thing I can't has always annoyed me.

u801e• 8 years 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?

rooam-dev2• 8 years ago

I would like to. What is a good video conference solution? To replace zoom (which works great for us so far) for example. Thanks.

Sir_Cmpwn5• 8 years ago

I like Jitsi. Zero setup, just push go and share the link:

https://meet.jit.si/

Open source software based on standardized browser technologies.

outworlder• 8 years ago

I was responsible for getting several development teams on Slack.

You see, nowadays few people outside of us hardcore geeks will want to use IRC (my first option). And there are things that "modern" chat clients do better. For instance, our monitoring system can post messages to slack with links to images to allow us to display graphs inline, links to runbooks, and even buttons to take actions. IRC won't do that.

Second option was Matrix with its (rather cool) open protocol, but the immaturity of clients and lack of integrations was a problem. Almost everything supports Slack, but good luck finding Matrix support. For our own systems this is manageable, but not all are under our control. Also, we would have to host and manage the infrastructure ourselves.

XMPP would be great on the integration front (surprisingly, Slack still wins), but once again it's something we would have to manage.

There were other options. Rocket.Chat, Hipchat, Mattermost, you name it. Each one with their own drawbacks.

So when asked by my manager what should we use, I could just answer "use slack" immediately, no ifs or buts, and most people would be happy with it.Assuming you have nothing against the company, the biggest technical con is the memory hungry client. The other issues are way harder to justify – big companies rarely care about proprietary protocols as long as they have a vendor to yell at.

Sir_Cmpwn5• 8 years ago

links to images to allow us to display graphs inline, links to runbooks, and even buttons to take actions. IRC won't do that.

Depends on the client. The Lounge does this.

comesee• 8 years 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.

g3rv430• 8 years 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.

splatzone2• 8 years 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!

bartread2• 8 years ago

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.

Honestly, if they do that they're idiots and, longer term, slack is a dying product: they'd be much, and I mean MUCH, better served by investing those resources in improving the product.

danmg2• 8 years ago

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.

thsowers• 8 years ago

You could still continue development on Github, and allow users to install the extension themselves. I believe this is the approach that some paywall bypass extensions take[0]

[0] https://github.com/arthurpham/wsjUnblock

Trufa• 8 years ago

On a side note, cool to see Uruguayans at the top of HN. Sorry it's under this circumstances.

Congrats on your Stackoverflow job :)

You wouldn't happen to have any recommendations for hiring web-devs here in Uruguay for a small startup? It's CRAZY HARD.

rileyt2• 8 years ago

I'd love to hear more about this from someone with legal expertise.

It makes no sense for them to claim that every extension published on the Chrome store needs to comply with their acceptable use policy...

If that were true, then wouldn't 1Password and any other extension that uses a content script also be considered unacceptable?

jahewson3• 8 years ago

Great question. What matters is the outcome, not the mechanism. It is the modification of the functionality of Slack’s product which is at issue. Most extensions don’t do that in any substantial manner.

Furthermore, in a civil suit what needs to be demonstrated are actual damages to their business. (It’s not enough to just show that the ToS were violated). There’s no possibility of that for most browser extensions.

barbegal4• 8 years ago

Whilst it is true that the extension has no legal obligation to follow the acceptable use policy, users do have to follow the policy and the courts would argue this extension coerces users to break the policy. The legal precedent is Blizzard vs Bossland [1] which Bossland lost in the UK courts [1], US courts [2] and German courts [3]

[1] https://www.bristows.com/news-and-publications/articles/bris...

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39490317

[3] http://gameslaw.org/bots-and-buddies-the-blizzard-v-bossland...

jjeaff7• 8 years ago

I'd say a large part of blizzard winning this case was the intent of the software. The interfering software was intended to facilitate cheating.

I think it would be unlikely to have won, had the software been made to streamline the game or make it run faster.

yonran• 8 years ago

One of Chrome Web Store’s terms is that a developer is not allowed to publish an extension that “knowingly violates a third party’s terms of service.”[1] So even if the author has the 1st Amendment right to publish the extension on his own website, Google will likely take it down from the Chrome Web Store.

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/terms

megous2• 8 years ago

What if it's a greasemonkey script?

dasmoth• 8 years 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.

g3rv430• 8 years 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.

dwighttk• 8 years ago

Anything that moves away from Electron is a plus in my book

chipotle_coyote• 8 years 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...)

saagarjha9• 8 years 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.

EdiX2• 8 years ago

I wonder how much longer Slack’s web client is going to remain a first class product?

It never was? The Android client takes 10 seconds to start, runs my device hot and the UI is so bad that the first time I tried to respond to a thread I couldn't figure out how to get out of the thread view.

The desktop client uses 1GB of memory gobbles my CPU and takes 20 seconds to start.

The "least bad client", the web client still takes 10 seconds to start, for no obvious reason. Last week I looked into it, it turns out that every time the client makes a request to the server it the TTFB is 300 to 500ms, on a connection with 40ms ping. So their backend is just as fucked as all their clients.

Even their email notifications don't work: every time I click on the link they send me it doesn't take me to the mention!!!

They did corner the market so clearly they must be doing something, but really I just can't see it. I'm completely stumped.

FlorianRappl• 8 years ago

They did corner the market so clearly they must be doing something, but really I just can't see it. I'm completely stumped.

One of the reasons is the lack of competition, e.g., we use Microsoft Teams instead, but its also an electron app with the same problems (and takes ages to start).

AHTERIX5000• 8 years ago

They did corner the market so clearly they must be doing something, but really I just can't see it. I'm completely stumped.

I've been wondering about this for a while now. Slack feels more like "just good enough" in terms of UX than anything special. It's just a chat application with terribly slow clients but somehow everyone is using it.

derefr2• 8 years ago

There are many enterprises that have web-only workflows. Eliminating the web client for Slack would be like eliminating the web client for Google Docs.

TeMPOraL4• 8 years ago

Does Google Docs have a non-web client (besides mobile)?

But I agree. And even outside enterprise, their web client is the least bad option if you have to use Slack.

alien19932• 8 years ago

I understand the naming issue but from the look of it the extension only works locally, where's the issue with that?

g3rv430• 8 years 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.

saagarjha9• 8 years ago

But I do this already with an ad blocker…

byte1918• 8 years 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.

alien19932• 8 years 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. :)

whoisjuan• 8 years 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.

pvg4• 8 years 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• 8 years 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:

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.

hangonhn• 8 years ago

Analogies are used a lot in law:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact_pattern

g3rv430• 8 years ago

this was a bunch of Tampermonkey scripts... but I don't want to ignore their cease and desist. I... just don't do it.

changing the name is not an issue... however, if I have to take it down, that's moot.

shawn2• 8 years ago

It's our right as developers to modify and upgrade the tools we use. It's important to ensure that this remains true both today and in the future.

I wanted to give you a moral boost, in case you were looking for a reason to take a stand. But if you don't want to, that's entirely valid.

mosselman• 8 years ago

"I... just don't do it."

You mean you do not ignore cease and desist orders by principal? Why? There should be at least some criteria by which you judge which ones you can ignore and which you can't? What if they told you to cease and desist programming forever on any project because they state in their terms that once you mess with their UI with JavaScript you are not allowed to program anymore? Ridiculous right? So would you listen? Probably not.

So lets see what they are 'forbidding' you: They don't want you to write code that makes browsers do other things to their site... How is that any of their business?

What if a new browser comes along that renders all of their fonts differently so that they become unreadable, is that any of their business or is it the business of the people who use that browser? I'd say the latter.

I agree that a disclaimer and a change of name should be enough. I'd suggest 'SlackingOff' as a name.

You are free to write any extension that does anything to any website as long as you aren't hurting users' human rights and as long as you aren't hacking them if you ask me. Users can decide whether they want to use your extension perfectly fine on their own.

Also note that you are free to not write any extension as well. It is your life of course :)

stunt• 8 years ago

@g3rv4, I understand it really sucks and feels terrible. But I also understand their reaction.

Don't be surprised about legal writing. He/She as a legal person is responsible for writing in a very clear and explicit way since any misunderstanding might cost the reader or themselves in the future. It just shows their accountability. You don't want a misunderstanding cost you trouble.

I have colleagues working in the legal department. They understand you, but they still have to make sure there is no misunderstanding there.

They are serving enterprise companies, Anything goes wrong can destroy their business. It makes sense for them not to risk anything.

Companies are paying them for the security. Otherwise, there are cheaper alternatives to Slack with somewhat similar features.

Slack could allow custom clients. But I'm pretty sure all major customers will require their employees not to use un-official clients for security reasons.

tptacek4• 8 years ago

He should talk to a lawyer, especially if he accepted a binding agreement by using Slack that forbids any of the research he did to figure out how to get his integrations to work.

scoom2• 8 years ago

A binding agreement? Why would he sign one of those?

barbegal4• 8 years ago

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. If it was found that all previous customers had suffered back pain then the disclaimer would not be enforceable and the ride owners could be sued for negligence.

mattigames6• 8 years ago

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.

jahewson3• 8 years ago

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.

kodablah6• 8 years ago

I think you can safely ignore this cease and desist

Will you cover his legal costs for choosing this decision? Right matters less than resources if it's expensive to even be right. You can state your case here on HN without repercussion, not so when being sued (it costs to even state your case reasonably due to hazards of self-defense and it costs dearly if you lose).

jjeaff7• 8 years ago

There isn't even a threat to sue yet. I'd at least wait until they escalate and post everything publicly as we go.

gumby2• 8 years ago

Oh come on, I chose not to read every word and view every image on a web page -- it's my attention, not theirs. I choose not to download large images or ads -- it's my browser, they are sending me the bits.

And if I choose to run my own code in my browser why not?? Who's computer is it, after all?

paulie_a• 8 years ago

To be fair cease and desist orders can generally be thrown directly in the trash.

I can't even count the number of them I have received. They look scary but basically will not be followed up with. You might as well just respond with "fuck off"

gnicholas4• 8 years ago

I think where the dev gets into trouble here is that he must have a Slack account in order to have built this. That means that he himself has agreed to the T&Cs at some point. If he could have built this without having an account, then he would have a better chance of being able to avoid liability.

In that case, there would be no "contractual privity" between Slack and the dev, and Slack would have to go after him for inducing breach of contract or some such thing.

gear54rus• 8 years ago

What he needs is to host it anonymously or give it to someone else to host. Corporate vultures can't get you if they can't find you.

djsumdog• 8 years ago

Reminds me of when Facebook sent an order to Unfriendfinder:

https://penguindreams.org/blog/discoverying-friend-list-chan...

castis3• 8 years 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.

g3rv430• 8 years ago

I guess... I'm sorry? and I'll try to do better next time, I promise.

phailhaus• 8 years 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!

iamthirsty• 8 years 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.

castis3• 8 years ago

Although you owe me nothing, if this were possible, an apology wouldn't be necessary.

_emacsomancer_• 8 years 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.

caffeinewriter• 8 years ago

I completely understand the decision to not stand their ground. Going up against Slack means going up against a multi-billion dollar company, and potentially all the legal firepower that entails. Even if every monetary cost were covered, there's still the time and opportunity cost of dealing with legal headaches.

castis3• 8 years ago

Oh I understand the legal implications of doing so. It is possible to both understand something and be disappointed at the same time.

buckminster• 8 years ago

Have you stopped using Slack?

EduardoBautista• 8 years ago

So I don't live in the USA. Can I fork it, rename it, and release it?

g3rv430• 8 years ago

yup

LinuxBender3• 8 years ago

It is on Github [1]

[1] https://github.com/g3rv4/BetterSlack

Tehnix• 8 years 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• 8 years 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.

saagarjha9• 8 years ago

Except, of course, for the fact that sending a cease and desist in this case wasn't particularly nice.

TylerE• 8 years ago

Well, I mean they are under no obligation to send a C&D. They could have gone right to a Trademark suit.

parliament32• 8 years 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.

splatzone2• 8 years 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.

chris_wot• 8 years ago

What it highlights is that you can send a decent cease and desist letter, and still be totally horrible.

flurdy• 8 years ago

Agree. Was about to post the same.

The name was always going to be an issue when the extension got traction and publicity (via HN etc).

And the issues with script injection will always be an issue. But that is not a Legal department decision. They simply will be told to write the C&D letter.

And this letter was the most polite and flexible I have seen. Usually, other companies' C&Ds are totally inflexible, technically inept and unrealistic overdramatic.

Yes, Slack the company (and not the legal department's responsibility) can handle this in different ways. They can reach out and suggest alternatives, they can hire the creator to implement some of the features, they can extend the APIs for more legal interactions, etc. Or they cut him off and "Teflon shoulder" it to their forums as they seem to have done.

Slack's legal department has done their job, and as I can see in the best possible matter once they got told to do so. Up to the company what they do next. If anything.

dingaling• 8 years ago

Slack's legal department has done their job

Interestingly Slack's trademark only covers usage of the name for:

'downloadable mobile application'

https://www.trademarkia.com/slack-86639051.html

Which would seem to leave web-based non-mobile scope open.

saagarjha9• 8 years 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• 8 years 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.

facetube5• 8 years ago

This. Who the hell goes to legal and creates PR risk instead of just hiring the dude?

tdewitt• 8 years 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.

g3rv430• 8 years ago

facetube5• 8 years ago

Yep, dead to me too. I decide what code runs on my hardware.

craigsmansion2• 8 years 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• 8 years 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• 8 years 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.)

throwawaymath2• 8 years 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.

rickycook• 8 years ago

well, his is the second comment in a week that i’ve seen (unrelated to betterslack) that mentioned this point. he’s certainly not the only one!

craigsmansion2• 8 years ago

70's counter-culture and early hacker culture are not that far apart. It's more than likely their origins are related.

Now if "Slack" means the pretty protocol-breaking irc-client to you, that's perfectly fine. But if some party starts threatening someone with 'That's not what "Slack" means! We're the authoritative source on the meaning of "Slack"', a hacker should resists. Slack is for everybody. Many may have forgotten, but it's not VC-money that makes the Internet go round, it's Slack.

To quote the prophet:

"If someone is making money off ``Slack'', it better be me."

"Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to trade their precious Slack for worthless trinkets."

"The Slack that can be described is not true Slack."

lillesvin2• 8 years 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.

jeremyjh• 8 years ago

Wow a subgenius! That sure brings back memories.

subway3• 8 years ago

Here's a spiffy new fork: https://github.com/betterlimp/betterlimp

userbinator2• 8 years ago

The slogan should be "better Limp than never."

subway3• 8 years ago

I like it.

xtracto• 8 years ago

Huge thanks for this. Made a fork myself. What is Slack thinking?

jgalentine007• 8 years ago

Can't stop laughing right now.

sundvor• 8 years ago

Haha, the diff on the package.json is brilliant!

tspike• 8 years ago

I see you've taken it down. Also bullied?

subway3• 8 years ago

No -- the original author is continuing to maintain BetterSlack as BitterSweet, albeit without publishing to the Chrome store.

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.

marsrover• 8 years ago

Pretty moronic of Slack to try and take it down considering it just furthers their own product.

ateesdalejr• 8 years 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• 8 years ago

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

Xylakant• 8 years 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)

TeMPOraL4• 8 years 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.

Qwertie2• 8 years 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?

TheDong2• 8 years 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.

alangpierce• 8 years ago

They're not saying that their server will leak data, they're saying that an ecosystem of Slack Chrome extensions injecting arbitrary JS is fundamentally much, much less secure than an ecosystem of integrations using official Slack APIs. It's debatable whether Slack has the authority to disallow Chrome extensions, but it's certainly in their interest to discourage them.

If everyone gets used to installing 5 Chrome extensions from unknown developers adding little themes and tweaks to Slack, then some of those extensions are going to be malicious and a lot of people are going to have their accounts stolen. Third-party software should only request as much access as it needs, and Chrome extensions are just bad architecture for this sort of problem, since you can't say "this extension gets to make benign visual tweaks to the page but doesn't get to steal my Slack account". I haven't worked with Slack's API, but nearly every API like it provides granular access and certainly doesn't let you steal the user's account, and all actions are done via an API token that can be tracked and revoked by Slack if your app is malicious.

sbr4642• 8 years 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• 8 years 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).

scoom2• 8 years ago

Using slack was your first mistake.

dude3• 8 years 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.

joeblau• 8 years ago

If you want to make a better version of Slack, go all the way.

kodablah6• 8 years 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• 8 years ago

I got into a similar pickle recently and did some press about it: 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• 8 years 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• 8 years 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• 8 years ago

Not much ground for them to stand on on the first point. Any chrome extension does exactly the same thing they complain about.

userbinator2• 8 years 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_matthias2• 8 years ago

We ran into this when we launched AtomicSlack, a digest summary tool for Slack groups.

Yet another reason I stay away from Slack.

joewadcan3• 8 years 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/ [2] https://geteventbot.com/

briandear• 8 years ago

I used ZenHub for a long time, but being forced to use Chrome was a dealbreaker for me.

g3rv430• 8 years 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• 8 years 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/Leg...

[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

RobertRoberts• 8 years ago

Have you considered asking them if you could continue running your system if you agreed to add a permanent large banner at the bottom or top stating clearly that your system may break user experience?

I realize they are saying something about privacy, so it may be their position to argue against every system that does what your's does...

alexnewman• 8 years ago

I just reached out to joe (of this post) and I now recommend geteventbot to everyone. Small businesses run by responsive leaders like that deserve our $$$s

balls187• 8 years ago

I read that as "Get Even Bot." Which would be a cool slack bot service as well...

joewadcan3• 8 years ago

Aww thanks Alex! Appreciate the note and glad you checked out Eventbot

avip• 8 years ago

Worth mentioning that github ended killing ZenHub, by introducing github projects, which is essentially copycat of the only useful feature ZenHub had.

hamandcheese• 8 years ago

GitHub projects is a much worse experience and still missing a lot of what ZenHub offers. It ranges from obvious holes like half decent filtering of the project board to niceties like viewing issues in a pop up modal rather than their own page (causing you to lose your spot in the board).

GH projects also has this arbitrary distinction between notes and issues, and notes are more or less useless yet the default when adding new items to the board.

masklinn• 8 years ago

Worth mentioning that github ended killing ZenHub, by introducing github projects

Sherlocking is a well-known risk every tenant application must consider if they want to make a business out of it.

I would hope and expect that the ZenHub folks always understood github could just integrate the features directly, and not necessarily by buying zenhub.

baby• 8 years ago

Remind me of f.lux on MacOS and iOS

benjamincharity• 8 years ago

As a daily user of ZenHub for over a year, I would strongly disagree that GitHub projects offers the same feature set. A Kanban view, yes.

2sk21• 8 years 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

chippy• 8 years 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?

g3rv430• 8 years 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.

g3rv430• 8 years 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.

013a2• 8 years 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• 8 years ago

IANAL but there's case law around maliciously causing a breach of contract.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference

013a2• 8 years 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• 8 years 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.

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 ;)

g3rv430• 8 years 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.

Pistos22• 8 years 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/eb676e8e508df0349662addd...

jrochkind1• 8 years 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• 8 years 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• 8 years 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• 8 years 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).

garmaine2• 8 years 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.

garmaine2• 8 years 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.

g3rv430• 8 years ago

lol, wouldn't it be funny?

pdfernhout2• 8 years 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-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."

g3rv430• 8 years 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 :)

pdfernhout2• 8 years 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 ). 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.

worik2• 8 years 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.

worik2• 8 years 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• 8 years 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• 8 years 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• 8 years 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

kerng• 8 years 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.

sbr4642• 8 years ago

I personally would 100% ignore their letter. Create an LLC, change the name, as you should. But always, always hack the planet.

hokus• 8 years ago

guys! IRC still works!

halr9000• 8 years ago

Super polite legal notice tho!

State_Of_Mind2• 8 years 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/ [2]https://matrix.org/blog/home/

g3rv430• 8 years 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_Mind2• 8 years 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!

Arathorn• 8 years ago

Speaking as someone working on matrix and riot, we would love you to come and do BetterSlack style things to Riot - we are getting tantalisingly close to being “as good as Slack” (except entirely FOSS, decentralised, standards based and with E2E encryption) - and positively encourage folks to customise the apps as long as they don’t introduce bugs or harm the security model. Plus we can just accept changes straight into the app rather than injecting via an extension. Pleeease come help us make it better - #riot-dev:matrix.org would be the place to come :) And yes, we have bridging to slack too.

anderspitman• 8 years 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.

enriquto• 8 years ago

When you read these bully letters you see the real, rotten soul of these callous companies.

indysigners• 8 years 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• 8 years 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• 8 years ago

Build protocols - not platforms

kristianov• 8 years ago

Maybe MoreoftheSameSlack.

wemdyjreichert• 8 years ago

Mirror of the extension: 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• 8 years 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.

Qwertie2• 8 years ago

If this threat is legally valid, doesn't that mean all adblockers/tracker blockers could be made illegal?

DigitalSea• 8 years 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• 8 years 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• 8 years 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• 8 years 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• 8 years 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• 8 years ago

There are already 3rd party Slack clients ( https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack https://github.com/bkanber/Slackadaisical 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• 8 years 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• 8 years 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• 8 years ago

And this is why I have private mattermost servers running - I can do whatever I want.

sklivvz1971• 8 years 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• 8 years 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.

pankajdoharey• 8 years 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• 8 years 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 [2] https://blog.github.com/2018-08-28-announcing-paper-cuts/

adem666• 8 years 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• 8 years 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• 8 years 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 )

rileyt2• 8 years ago

I just release a similar extension that I'd love feedback on 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.

kuon2• 8 years 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.

katheriin3• 8 years ago

Just out of curiosity, why riot.im out of all the open source alternatives to Slack and similar tools?

kuon2• 8 years ago

Because of the matrix.org foundations.

Bye bye BetterSlack

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