Large US company came after me for releasing a free open-source alternative

> I originally had my tagline as "The Free open-source [Company A] Alternative," which they claimed was illegally driving their traffic to my site.

In the UK it’s common for supermarkets to advertise “we price match Aldi”. (Aldi is the trademarked name of a low price supermarket chain). Maybe the US trademark law is different, but I’d be surprised if you can’t claim to be someone’s competitor.

It also occurs that even if their were laws in the US that said that you couldn’t advertise that you were a competitor of a trademark, they’d probably be unconstitutional.

> You can upload unlimited flight logs for free.

> BUT you can only view the last 100 flights.

> If you want to see your older data, you have to pay a monthly subscription and a $15 "retrieval fee."

> Even then, you can't bulk download your own logs. You have to click them one by one. They effectively hold your own data hostage to lock you into their ecosystem. I am not sure if they are even GDPR complaint even in the EU

1. There is zero reason for this to be an online, cloud-hosted application. This is... a database. 20 years ago, this would have been a 400KB EXE you ran on your computer and that was that.

2. I hope people are not deleting their own logs after uploading them to this service. Surely, users aren't relying on this site as some kind of backup for their data. Especially when their business model appears to be clearly HostageWare.

EDIT-ALSO:

The legal basis for this threat doesn't make much sense. The company is saying that mere mentioning of their company (or product) name "uses the [product] name and brand as a commercial hook to drive traffic and adoption of your unfairly competing tools."

If this was enforceable, how would any project that provides open source compatibility with some company's proprietary format be legal? If I write a program that downloaded fitness data from my Garmin smartwatch and mentioned "compatible with Garmin smartwatches" on the project's GitHub, am I suddenly infringing their trademark? (Not looking for legal advice, just confirmation that this company's position is legally bizarre.)

"Unfair competition" is hilarious. It's just competition. Talk about wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

Barbra Streisand sends her regards :)

good to see some civility has entered the scene though. The CEO got in contact and apologized for the aggressive attack on the guy. they're now chatting.

Anyone know what company it was that he was competing with? I tangentially support one of these cloud drone systems, and it's pretty shitty for the price.

“Felony Contempt of Business Model” on the part of AirData.

This highlights the unfortunate reality of legal asymmetry, where the threat of a costly defense often matters more than the actual legality of the code. It’s a stark reminder of why robust anti-SLAPP protections and organizations like the EFF are so vital for protecting the individual's right to tinker.