
Bye bye BetterSlack - g3rv4
https://g3rv4.com/2018/08/bye-bye-betterslack
======
joewadcan
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/)

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

~~~
benjamincharity
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.

~~~
subpixel
Also a Zenhub customer. I can't but assume features would be coming stronger
and faster had GitHub not implemented projects.

------
whoisjuan
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.

~~~
g3rv4
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.

~~~
stunt
@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.

~~~
tigershark
> 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.

Ok, then he/she can be called out since we are on the front page of HN and
there is a lot of noise and harm done. I honestly can’t see a single reason
why slack legal department, probably worth millions per year, in a company
worth several _billions_ , can write such things just to kill a free chrome
extension built by a single person for non profit reasons. I never used slack
but from now on I will actively advice against using it. When you arrive at
the point that you can’t even modify your browser to see whatever you like I
think that we are almost at the brink of total destruction/anarchy/“choose
your not so preferred destination”. Disclosure for slack layers: I never used
your product, so I never agreed to your TOS and I would never use it
hopefully. I am not associated in any way with any of your competitors. I
sadly have to admit that sometimes I play with JSFiddle in my browser just for
fun. If you want to sue me please go on, there is not much difference compared
to what you are suing g3rv4 for.

------
danmg
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."

~~~
gandreani
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
> 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
Its the opposite at my workplace. Mostly the developers use Slack. What do
your devs use instead?

~~~
g3rv4
We use bonfire, which is the same tool the community at Stack Overflow uses to
interact.

~~~
miles_matthias
Is there a link to bonfire somewhere? You're not talking about Facebook's
video call app are you?

~~~
g3rv4
it’s this: [https://chat.stackoverflow.com](https://chat.stackoverflow.com)
but unfortunately, it’s not open source or available for other teams to use in
private.

~~~
kabacha
Oh god it's an ugly, slow mess.

\- Why does it have list of users with their avatars and everytime new person
comes in it has a huge, slow animation lol

\- ads for other rooms and quarter of the screen is "best comments top list"

\- the chat user avatars are unaligned, some are bigger, some smaller, some
have usernames under avatare, some on the right.

I'm not sure if it's a late april fools joke or what's going on here.

------
craigsmansion
"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.)

~~~
throwawaymath
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.

~~~
craigsmansion
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."

~~~
throwawaymath
_> 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._

Okay but they didn't do that. Slack is concerned about someone using their
name in relation to third party, unaffiliated software which is _obviously_
related to their own software. Slack the messaging company doesn't care about
the use of Slack outside of that niche.

If you wrote a browser extension called "BetterSlack" that emulated Slackware
in your browser, Slack wouldn't care. If you wrote a browser extension called
"DontSlackOff!" that automatically restricted the time you could procrastinate
on Hacker News or reddit, Slack wouldn't care.

Slack cares about its _brand_ , not being the canonical authority on an
English word use of that word in products. The idea that Slack cares about
uses of the word that don't have anything to do with its own software seems
like a willful misinterpretation of the point. This is a pretty mundane
legality and has nothing to do with hacker culture or "resisting" anything.

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

------
tdewitt
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.

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

------
subway
Here's a spiffy new fork:
[https://github.com/betterlimp/betterlimp](https://github.com/betterlimp/betterlimp)

~~~
userbinator
The slogan should be "better Limp than never."

~~~
subway
I like it.

------
pdfernhout
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...](https://pdfernhout.net/reasons-not-to-use-slack-for-free-software-
development.html) "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
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
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.

------
comesee
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
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
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
I dont think they can, or all the adblockers would have been removed already.

~~~
rovr138
Any extension that Interacts with pages. I have so many of them. Vimium
injects itself onto every page.

------
State_Of_Mind
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/)

~~~
g3rv4
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

~~~
Arathorn
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.

~~~
g3rv4
you will def see me there

------
AlphaWeaver
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)

------
DigitalSea
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
> 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.

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

~~~
Xylakant
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)

------
dasmoth
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
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.

~~~
saagarjha
> 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.

~~~
fbmac
are you thinking about opensource? I don't think it would be opensource

~~~
dx87
You do it the same way exploit writers do. Attach a debugger to the process,
find the memory address of the resource you want to modify, overwrite the
address with the address of the modified resource you want to execute. You
could also just use the debugger to force the program to execute functions
with arguments you specify, that way you don't have to worry about mucking
with the memory.

~~~
saagarjha
Usually you'd create a dynamic library that interposes a function, so you
don't have to much around with using a debugger. This way you have a
persistent modification that's much more resilient to changes caused by app
updates. Exploit writers generally have different goals: their thing only
really needs to work once, and only with the current configuration, since
usually the bug they're relying on gets patched in the next version.

------
degenerate
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.

~~~
derefr
> 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
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.

~~~
arvidkahl
There is a node-js package to pack and unpack asar files. You can modify any
asar archive by unpacking, copying/editing and re-packing. The signature would
obviously change, but most electron apps really don't check for that (yet).

------
edhelas
…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
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
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...](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/blob/eb676e8e508df0349662addd6245ebf7ab235744/scripts/lib/install-
node#L35)

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

------
kodablah
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.

------
alien1993
I understand the naming issue but from the look of it the extension only works
locally, where's the issue with that?

~~~
g3rv4
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.

~~~
byte1918
> 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
...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...

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

------
donohoe
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.

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

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

~~~
saagarjha
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.

------
noir_lord
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).

------
dal
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.

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

~~~
phailhaus
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
<3 thanks :) yes, it’s particularly hard because I’ve never disappointed
anyone before :P

------
013a
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
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
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.

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

Yet another reason I stay away from Slack.

------
lbj
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.

------
userbinator
_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.

------
garmaine
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
lol, wouldn't it be funny?

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

~~~
LinuxBender
It is on Github [1]

[1] -
[https://github.com/g3rv4/BetterSlack](https://github.com/g3rv4/BetterSlack)

------
Sir_Cmpwn
Folks, use IRC, XMPP, Matrix, etc. Using proprietary protocols is _dumb_.

~~~
canadaduane
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_.

~~~
sofaofthedamned
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.

~~~
ethbro
The more frightening thing is that Cisco (presumably as developer of the
client?) couldn't change the defaults to solve one of their own problems.

~~~
sofaofthedamned
Can't remember, it was a while ago. I will say that anybody who knows what
Blizzard is will know how bad their IM was.

------
rileyt
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.

------
robinhowlett
I got into a similar pickle recently and did some press about it:
[http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com/getting-from-cease-
and-...](http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com/getting-from-cease-and-desist-
to-come-work-with-us/)

I'm also working on a Chrome Extension that modifies the functionality of a
website, but this is giving me second thoughts.

------
sklivvz1971
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...

------
chippy
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
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.

------
gsich
>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.

------
throwaway_19sz
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/)

------
ptman
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.

------
ajambrovic
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 )

------
maxehmookau
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.

------
adem666
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!

------
scoom
Using slack was your first mistake.

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

------
yoz-y
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.

------
jrochkind1
Hmm. Can website acceptable use policies really prevent you from
distributing/using browser extensions?

Do we really not control our own browsers anymore?

~~~
Rapzid
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.

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

~~~
kuon
Because of the matrix.org foundations.

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

------
wemdyjreichert
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.

------
sbr464
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
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).

------
doesnt_know
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?

------
chubs
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.

------
kerng
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.

------
fiatjaf
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?

------
worik
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
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.

------
User23
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.

------
agentPrefect
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!

------
profalseidol
> 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.

------
rdl
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”)

------
indysigners
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!

------
pankajdoharey
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.

------
sbr464
I personally would 100% ignore their letter. Create an LLC, change the name,
as you should. But always, always hack the planet.

------
garmaine
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.

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

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

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

------
hokus
guys! IRC still works!

------
r1b
Build protocols - not platforms

------
halr9000
Super polite legal notice tho!

------
kristianov
Maybe MoreoftheSameSlack.

------
dude3
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.

