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Comment by g3rv4 | Hacker News Reader

Because... I have lots of things to work on, lots of things I want to build, lots of people I want to talk with.

None of them involve talking with a lawyer in a different country over something that's really not that important in my life.

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I see all of these comments in here telling you that Slack doesn't have a leg to stand on, that you should do your best to stick it to them, that you're in the right, that you should ignore them, etc. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "If I were in this person's shoes, I'd probably distribute it privately to a few people who might want it, and in spite of all the hard work, let the project die in official capacity."

On principle, I want to side with all these other commenters. Fact of the matter is that time is precious. Glad you're doing what you feel is important to you.

Especially since anyone thinking it should continue can just fork and do so.

Once he delete it, everyone will lose their fork if they don't have a local actual independent copy from Github

"Deleting a public repository

When you delete a public repository, one of the existing public forks is chosen to be the new parent repository. All other repositories are forked off of this new parent and subsequent pull requests go to this new parent."

https://help.github.com/articles/what-happens-to-forks-when-...

Especially someone who has no existing contractual, customer, or ToS relationship with Slack.

I got a cease and desist for a extension that improved the look of Craigslist. I just ignored it, I've never had to talk to a lawyer or anything. But that's my situation, I understand that other people may feel differently. EFF offered to review my case, but I didn't wind up following up with that either. Might be an option for you.

Craigslist sued another company that extended its listings with their own code and, as I recall, won.

I assume you mean this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_Inc._v._3Taps_Inc.

It seems unlikely to apply to a Chrome extension:

Craigslist Inc. v. 3Taps Inc., 942 F.Supp.2d 962 (N.D. Cal. 2013) was a Northern District of California Court case in which the court held that sending a cease-and-desist letter and enacting an IP address block is sufficient notice of online trespassing, which a plaintiff can use to claim a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

What would keep it from applying to an extension? It says sufficient, not necessary and sufficient.

For one thing, the extension author is not an active participant and cannot be considered to be trespassing. A user, maybe. But I don't think we'll see Slack banning users anytime soon.

The intent is clear. I don't know the details of those decisions but Blizzard has won cases and stopped people from distributing tools that access their services in ways they don't approve of.

There may be other laws, precedents, and circumstances that are relevant. That doesn't mean that this case is.

> different country

If you are in a different country than US I wouldn't worry at all. I would just avoid using the name "Slack".

Maybe let other people continue it? Shame to throw stuff away. Plenty of countries where that cease and desist would go straight to thrash.

Nothing is stopping other people from doing that now.

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