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Comment by andreyf | Hacker News Reader

Missing the context... What code was there before? Was it a reverse engineering of the API whatsapp binaries use? Is there any legal basis for demanding someone remove that?

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The code is still there, just browse code in the latest pull request.

https://github.com/venomous0x/WhatsAPI/tree/fd07b49a459cda25...

Can you clone this somehow? You can get a ZIP from the sidebar, but having the history would be nice.

It's not well-known, but if you use "git clone --mirror" instead of just "git clone", you get a copy of all the pull requests as git commits, with the full history leading to each of them.

Yes, WhatsAPI was a reverse engineer and implementation of the WhatsApp protocol.

It was mostly used by websites offering a web based chat interface for WhatsApp and by spammers.

Actually these libraries are used by third-party clients on platforms that Whatsapp doesnt officially support such as webOS, Firefox OS and others. Its not about spamming, its about being able to offer a decent client on platforms that are not covered by official clients.

Does the library enable the service to be used on more platforms? Yes. Does the library enable spammers to abuse the service? Also yes. It's not an either/or situation.

A library is just a tool, like a hammer, you can build a shelf with it or hit your neighbor. anyway, you don`t solve that problem by banning hammers....

Pardon my ignorance, but is it using the same api which inherently whatsApp client uses? Or is it just a open sourced version of whatsApp?

Yes it's a client for the WhatsApp API, presumably reverse engineered from the what the official app does.

It communicates with the official WhatsApp servers.

I don't think there's a legal basis for preventing someone from reverse engineering an API in general.

The "non-circumvention" clause in the DMCA is often used to go after people reverse engineering DRM, but I fail to see how it would be applicable in this case.

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