I mean this seriously, and I’m not intending to be inflammatory…
As someone who has been burned twice by major platforms I count on over recent years (PFSense and FreeNAS), I’d like to know that there are no plans to split off something like a “Community Edition” vs. paid version of Home Assistant.
In the case of both of those examples, they were free, and people based their networks around them. We reported bugs, worked with developers to resolve them, etc… only to have the “maintained” versions transition to paid products, and a “Community Edition” get left behind for those who helped build it in the first place.
With HACS being integrated as a “Marketplace” in future versions, it triggers some suspicion. Is there anything that would prevent Home Assistant from going down a similar route?
If it improves maintenance of integrations that require updates, why would this be wrong ? Time and effort would be compensated. I would be ok with that.
This is a bit like if I grew some tomatoes in my garden for the family and then my wife said why dont you start selling the tomatoes and that would encourage me to improve the quality of the fruit.
It is ok to disagree !!! However developers in HACS are not family (though it feels sometimes). They may come up with great ideas and integrations and later moving on. Some compensation may keep them motivated. I have seen this in Universal Development’s Eisy where Polyglots were sometimes not updated and users frustrated. (BTW UD has great customer support).
The “Free” in FreeNAS is now so “free” that you have to call them for a quote.
The question I’m asking doesn’t involve any statement that “Home Assistant” will be free forever. I’m asking whether the code will fork into a paid product with another name, leaving the “Home Assistant” software “free forever” but without much active development.
When projects do that sort of thing, it bothers me. Perhaps because I keep getting burned by it. There are a lot of people contributing code to HA, submitting bugs, troubleshooting, etc… I just want to get some clarity that HA isn’t following the same path. I’m not accusing them of it, I just think people should be reassured.
With HA now essentially ingesting HACS, and essentially all the code that comes with it, I think a lot of people would want reassurance. I’m not asking this of my own fears… I’m reading others expressing concern. I’m just adding my experience as an explanation of why some are worried about it, and asking.
All too often projects treat users as beta testers, right up until the project is polished. The marketplace thing makes sense to make HACS simpler to access. It also makes it much easier to arrange for Home Assistant to remain technically free, but split the fees for users to install additional “features” through an already established “store” as you say…
Maybe instead of being “Tell Me I’m Wrong”, it should be “Prove I’m Wrong”?
I’ve had that frustration with HA. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve relied on an integration from HACS, and then find nobody is fixing anything anymore. Developers disappear. I can’t help but think a lot of what is in HACS is a college project a student undertakes for a class, and they never visit Github again after graduation.
HACS already contains links for many people to contribute to the developers. I’ve done it… But I don’t think HA should facilitate any payment. If I buy the integration through HA, I’m going to expect it to keep working. As it stands right now, HA advertises Emby as a supported integration, but nobody can show me a working and maintained Emby integration.
You’re wrong.
You don’t seem to understand the difference between Home Assistant and HACS integrations/apps.
I’m guessing you’ve never watched a “State of the Open Home” video.
You don’t seem to understand the true nature of open software.
If you want to continue to believe that something evil/wrong is coming then you are perfectly free to do so.
No one will be able to tell you or prove this to you - and even if someone were to claim or prove it now, that certainly doesn’t mean it will remain true forever and for all eternity. So, you have no choice but to hope that things stay as they are; as for what the future holds, that remains to be seen.
It will be because OHF owns HA. They are the owners, it’s ran by a committee of people, they legally can’t sell it either. there’s no question to this but here we are with these stupid conspiracy theories.
I was at the OHF summit when it was discussed that HACS was moving into HA. The main reasoning is because OHF is so far behind with adding new integrations to core (6+ months for a new integration review) . At the same time, old integrations are getting abandoned by code owners in core. So the process for new integrations was going to be streamlined into the marketplace for testing or possibly living there forever.
As long as the charter stays in place you’re covered as it’s a foundational doc in an actual chartered foundation that governs non profit (taxable) status. It’s kind of a big deal.
No, nobody KNOWS the future but, if you suddenly see them try to cast off the charter then I’d be concerned but until then.
HA has one of the stronger protections in place. Now if you want a fun one to pick on, go try the Smartthings community site. They have an actual problem to deal with as they are not owned by a nonprofit board and thier owners are making some interesting choices.
I’m not entirely sure who or what you are referring to when you mention “these stupid conspiracy theories.” In any case, I haven’t posted any such “stupid conspiracy theories” here; I merely pointed out that, as of today, no one can say what might happen with HA at some point in the future - unless, of course, one were a fortune-teller who had glimpsed the future in a crystal ball.
No, I don’t need to look at what might happen - or what has already happened - somewhere down the line. I simply wanted to point out to @HouseOfCards that no one can provide an answer that is 100% correct and will remain valid indefinitely.
But I’m going to bow out of this conversation now, as there seems to be some issue with what I was trying to express here.
I see integrations are being removed from HACS if they have not been updated in two years, even if they still work perfectly fine. This is not ideal. Though easy enough to work around with a local copy or custom repository.
So, you have no choice but to hope that things stay as they are; as for what the future holds, that remains to be seen.