I’m sure I’m not alone, but I’ve had my struggles and frustrations with hassio since I started using it. Spending plenty of time trying to figure out how to get it to work, device adds, updates which put either part or all of my devices out of commission. Debugging. Not getting any help from the forums. The list can go on. Now, if I want to use hassio with Alexa or Google, I have to pay $5/month. I’ve been thinking for some time, since my last set of configuration troubles, that maybe it was time for Samsung Smartthings or a Wink Hub.
It’s great that Paulus Schoutsen, Pascal Vizeli and Ben Bangert want to be billionaires, but it seems to me they took the hard and creative work of the open source community and claimed it as their own.
Seems to me you’re using “have to” wrong.
Reading your post gives me the impression you’re not the one for tinkering with beta software and are better suited for a finished commercial product.
To get the facts straight: The forum you are posting in is not running for free. Also, do we need to pay for other parts like the build systems for Hass.io.
To become sustainable for the next couple of years in regard of development and infrastructure there needs to be an income stream and the Cloud part should become that stream. As @DavidFW1960 already mentioned you are free to use the alternatives.
Also, it seems that you don’t know who does guys are. They are not claiming it as “their own work”. Hard to tell where you got that from.
I know how frustrating it can be to set it up… However be aware you can still use it for free without the cloud integration (Google Assistant and Alexa). You could even get Google Assistant and Alexa running for free but it requires some more effort and maintenance from your side which is what you were paying for to Nabu Casa, plus funding the devs of HomeAssistant which did all of this for free.
I know 5 bucks is to some fairly expensive for what you get, at least to me it feels like a fairly expensive subscription and one more subscription to pay and is getting sickening with so many subscription services, but I’m aware someone has to maintain it and it’s not a a one-off purchase. I hope it can be revised and maybe lowered when yearly subscriptions come out… Happy to pay for a couple of months or donate 20 bucks, but people are getting sick of subscriptions and pricing can be sensitive nowadays with some many subscription services and the features they have, the value you get out of them (Office365, GoogleOne, Spotify, Pandora, etc). I know you cannot compare them, but people will still do it, the value you get for money.