Hello, just want to discuss the subject.
I’ve been using Home Assistant Supervised for several years now, both for my personal home and for my clients as a Smart Home system integrator for various apartments and houses. Over the last two years, I’ve encountered a recurring issue where projects already in operation stop working due to significant changes in the Home Assistant core or its integrations. Typically, this starts with integrations; for example, a manufacturer changes something in their API, and after some time, the integration author makes the necessary adjustments. However, they often lack the resources or willingness to create patches for all older versions of Home Assistant, so patches are only released for the current stable version. Clients end up with broken systems, and the only way to fix them is to update Home Assistant, which often leads to a cascade of issues affecting numerous devices and integrations.
For example, let’s take the Fibaro integration. You might have over 200 devices connected to it, and when you update, a whole chain of problems unfolds. Or, an integration suddenly changes its configuration method from YAML to GUI in the middle of the year. It’s a frustrating situation. Ideally, changes should move in the opposite direction.
In typical closed ecosystems (like Fibaro), we debug all installed Z-Wave devices from Fibaro, let the customer use the system for several months, wait for key fixes from manufacturer, and “freeze” the controller and devices firmware in that happy state. It works for about 3-5 years until the controller or key components fail. But with Home Assistant, this isn’t possible at the moment (mostly it is not the problem of HA itself, but it’s is due to complexity of hardware and brands it covers).
My actual questions to discuss are as follows:
First, Is it even possible to sell Home Assistant integrations to clients legally? Technically, yes, as we are not making changes and we are not claiming the system as your own development. We charge only for planning, setup, and support.
The second question is whether it’s possible to release some form of a paid Home Assistant LTS (Long-Term Support) version, where backports for critical security issues and key integrations could be provided as needed? I’m not talking about paid Nabu Casa support as it’s a kind of different thing. What I mean is like RHEL or Centos 7 with security fixes and key components backports.