I plan to develop a product similar to Hubitat/Samsung SmartThings based on homeassistant-core/frontend/supervisor, with wifi/Ble/z-wave/zigee.
I will also develop frontend ui, app, and server based on Ha (Although the configuration and operation interface of the hub will be completely different from homeassistant, I will still use some cards) and plan to sell it on Amazon. There are several problems:
Can this Hub product be sold on Amazon, do i need to mark the software as homeassistant (but you can’t use the homeassistant app, and the control panel is also completely different from ha)?
Can I use Integrations in the software so that my Hub can support as many devices as possible?
According to Apache License 2.0, I do not have to mention homeassistant in the product packaging and advertisements.
I am a software and hardware engineer with many years of work experience. It is not difficult to modify the software, but I don’t know the potential risks of commercial use.
Thank you.
This is not an answer, since I can not give that, but more an observation.
Software in the open source community seems to fall under mainly 3 license types, Apache License 2.0, GNU Public License and MIT License.
Home Assistent seems to be under Apache License, but HACS is using MIT License, so you will probably have to go through the integrations and figure that out for each one.
Apache 2 is very lax. You basically can do whatever you want with the code. Even more so with MIT which leans towards public domain.
It’s unrelated to trademarks, though so you likely cannot use the Home Assistant name (assuming it’s trademarked, and I definitely hope it is for their own sake) without explicit permission.
Thank you for your reminder. The Mit License seems to be more open than apache2. The question is whether each integration can be used directly, or whether the HAC Store can be used directly?
You do not find Home Assistant on Amazon, because the important thing is not home assistant, but the protocol the item use.
The protocol is the real definition and Home Assistant just have an interface for that protocol as do many other programs.
It very strange that my product uses homeassistant, but according to apache2, I cannot mention homeassistant in my products, but I will be scolded by people for selling homeassistant by haven’t mention homeassistant, profit from it.
That is actually quite common because Nabu Casa does not own or support the product. They have actually announced 2 official products.
The first is Home Assistant Blue.
The second is the more powerful Home Assistant Yellow