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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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.

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

You don't have to literally sign something to be bound by an agreement.

In many jurisdictions you can't be bound by an agreement if not explicitly agreeing. It most likely boils down to where Gervasio lives. In my country for example I'd be certain Slack would have no standing at all with this. Though even in the US Slack would have to pull an Oracle to win this (which, well, is the risk that they might). Good reminder though in which moral category of enterprises Slack has to be sorted in.

It does not matter, he does not want to fight this.

It might be more than just a EULA. Often to sign up for an API key, you have to go through a bit more explicit agreement to a ToS than there is in a standard funnel. There's also a bit more of an expectation that people will actually read them (and are competent to understand them).

This extension doesn't use the API. It just injects some JavaScript. Just like every adblockers and password manager does.

I know. I think the author might have been interested in the API and signed up separately, though.

> You don't have to literally sign something to be bound by an agreement.

That's only in the US as far as I know, everywhere else you can't be bound by an agreement without signing anything.

Well here in the EU you can easily make a contract without signature. Even handshake contracts could be binding.

So thats not true.

"in the EU" is false. There are many different countries and several of those do not accept handshake agreements as contracts at all.

This is absolutely false.

Regardless of where you are, the majority of the agreements you enter into are not only not signed, they are not even explicit (but rather implied).

Case in point: practically everytime you buy something and pay with cash, you have entered into a purchase agreement without having signed anything.

These are not terms of use but laws.

"Terms of Use" are part of the agreement between you and a service provider with regards to the service being provided. That's a civil law contract like any other.

No that's not, and I'm not playing on semantic. Laws are above any terms of use, regardless of what they might say. And not using the product makes you not bound to the terms of use, unlike laws which you have to obey at all times.

I'm beginning to think that when you said by "not signing anything" earlier, you actually meant "not agreeing to anything", is that correct?

> And not using the product makes you not bound to the terms of use, unlike laws which you have to obey at all times.

Of course not. But in this specific case, it is safe to assume that he is using the product, or more specifically: he used Slack to develop BetterSlack.

Ah yeah sorry, there's been some misunderstanding, I agree with you.

I think what tptacek means is that when we sign up for a service, we agree to terms of use. Even if we don't sign it, it might be legally undecided as to whether that counts as a binding contract, nor whether "terminate the user's service" is the only recourse the service provider has.

In most of the world it is decided. The decision is click-wrap 'contracts' are unenforceable. Starting with the fact that they don't meet the definition of a contract.

The Wikipedia article on "clickwrap" have reference to 10 different cases clickwrap license upheld by court.

He talked in detail about how his company is long-time user of Slack. He and his colleagues each agreed to the "no reverse engineering" terms when they signed up.

Maybe the agreement isn't binding depending on his local jurisdiction, but it's unclear how he could use Slack without agreeing (or at least clicking "agree") to the terms.

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