Bye bye BetterSlack(g3rv4.com)
g3rv4.com
Bye bye BetterSlack
https://g3rv4.com/2018/08/bye-bye-betterslack
383 comments
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.
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.
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."
"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.)
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.)
> 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.
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.
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.
Here's a spiffy new fork: https://github.com/betterlimp/betterlimp
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."
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.
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/
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/
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
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
…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 ;)
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 ;)
It's a shame because Slack is so painful. Reminds me of Twitter fighting 3rd party clients.
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.
I understand the naming issue but from the look of it the extension only works locally, where's the issue with that?
Pretty moronic of Slack to try and take it down considering it just furthers their own product.
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.
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.
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).
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
We ran into this when we launched AtomicSlack, a digest summary tool for Slack groups.
Yet another reason I stay away from Slack.
Yet another reason I stay away from Slack.
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.
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.
...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.
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.
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/