If you were right, then the Feature Requests subforum would have overwhelmed the devs by now.
But it hasn’t, so you are not right.
The Feature Requests forum is healthy and productive. By contrast, ZHA Device Handler requests from users (not devs) are disorganised and sometimes stall completely because of the friction I mentioned above.
And it has.
There is a lot of activity in the feature requests sub-forum. That doesn’t mean that they’re getting implemented in a timely manner or even scheduled.
In that subforum, users also don’t have a way to find out what the state of a particular feature in that forum is or whether the feature has been closed or there is a pull request or anything of the sort. They have to use a forum for this, which is not an issue tracking platform. I can’t filter by issue state. I can’t know in a list which features have been implemented, which haven’t, which state the feature is right now. Forum suck for this.
Requests are best tracked by an issue tracking platform. That is why issue tracking platforms exist. Get over it.
First: feature requests ≠ bug reports (“issues”).
Secondly, I’m fine with issue trackers. If the Open Home Foundation had an issue tracker that wasn’t spyware, that would be great and I’d use it. Sadly, it doesn’t (yet) have one.
It does have a feature request forum that is, in the absence of such an issue tracker, and to avoid the friction mentioned in my posts above, clearly the best place for users to post feature requests. That’s the point of this thread.
You’re asking a user who came to Home Assistant specifically to avoid cloud-first surveillance-ware from Big Tech to “get over it” and sign up for an account with Microsoft, an OG of evilware? That’s no better than telling users to give up on HA and privacy and to just use Alexa or Nest or some nonsense like that.
Your admonition is against everything the Open Home Foundation claims to stand for.
So no, I’m not going to “get over it”, and nor should anyone else.
Yes, in the context of the Home Assistant project, it has been decreed a long time ago that issues will not include feature requests.
However, in most every other software project, an issue tracker is the thing that is used to track feature requests as well as bugs and other kinds of tasks that are related to software development.
Ultimately, which tool will be used to track requests such as the one you want tracked here in the forum? Depends upon the people who will be fulfilling those requests. If they want to use GitHub or they want to use Codeberg or they want to use Sourceforge, or even Jira, it’s their prerogative.
I don’t really care that much. I’ve had a GitHub account since many years before Microsoft acquired GitHub. There is no threat model that includes GitHub doing evil on me and ruining my life, even if it’s owned by Microsoft. What is the worst that GitHub could do to us? Stop providing free hosting and code search? OK then — we’ll just move somewhere else. If GitHub really does go completely closed, nothing breaks in an enduring way for me. The most pressing concern would be to recover issues and pull requests being tracked by GitHub, for which there is a reasonable case to be made that an effort is needed to back that info up periodically using GitHub’s API.
I am all about being local first, self-hosted and sovereign for stuff that involves storage and processing of personal information. I even worked long enough (a decade) to completely de-Google and then host everything personal for myself. But open source development doesn’t require privacy, and neither do your requests for device handlers. In fact, those activities inherently are social rather than personal and should be done in the open. GitHub works well for that. If and when it ceases to work well for that, then we will have to find a solution. But that is not a pressing problem right now.
What has been asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
If you are unreasonably concerned about cookies from GitHub.com being used to track your location or your whereabouts online somewhere else, all you have to do is turn off third party cookies in your browser. There you go. If you want to go the extra mile, you can set up in your browser a filter so that nothing from any Microsoft domains loads. Problem solved.
No, it isn’t. They need to meet the users on common ground.
In the case of Open Home Foundation projects, that common ground should uphold Open Home Foundation’s raison d’etre, which is the main reason users choose Home Assistant.
Otherwise those principles get undermined (by promoting proprietary surveillance-heavy services) and scorned (through snarky put-downs like “get over it”), and enshittification wins.
Instead of continuing to be high-handed and wrong, check the links in my earlier posts in this thread.
If only that were true!
Third-party cookies aren’t the only web tracking mechanisms available. Others include:
Plus, you’re forgetting that to post an issue on GitHub, you have to sign in to GitHub, which is a Microsoft service. Signing-in gives Microsoft a massive headstart on tracking via any/all of those mechanisms.
That would mean blocking github.com, which is a Microsoft domain. So in that case I’d definitely have to file feature requests here rather than at GitHub!
I’m glad you’ve finally (implicitly) accepted the point of this thread.
I really don’t care.
I’ll conclude by reminding the readers that HA users at no point are required to get a GitHub account to use HA. Some third-party extensions available for HA can require a Github account, but overwhelmingly most do not.
HA development, on the other hand, categorically requires you to have an account there. Requesting a ZHA device handler is most decidedly a development activity, not an activity that a regular user would do ordinarily in the course of using Home Assistant. It is perfectly reasonable for a person trying to do that to be expected to have a GitHub account. You want code to be changed or want to make code changes yourself? If you want that code change to be tracked all the way into the codebase, then we expect you to use GitHub.
If your complaint is that ZHA device handler should be handled on the forum because they are a user activity and not a development activity, then you’re just factually wrong. If your complaint is that home assistant and the Open Home Foundation use GitHub at all for any purpose, then that’s a different complaint, which you will have to take up with the folks who run the project.
This is false. There are plenty of user requests for ZHA Device Handlers in this forum.
As a HA user I want to be able to file ZHA Device Handler requests without being told to go elsewhere.
By your definition, I cannot be a HA dev because I do not have a GitHub account - so my requests must therefore, by your definition, be user requests.
I’m sure if you create a thread where you paste your code, explain your views on Github and ask someone to paste it on Github for you someone will help you.
Thanks, but that’s a workaround, not a solution.
And these aren’t views, they’re facts.
The Open Home Foundation is contradicting its stated principles by requiring users to have Microsoft/GitHub accounts in order to make certain feature requests for Home Assistant or other Open Home Foundation software.
The solution would be to change this guidance so that it no longer tells users to post feature requests on GitHub.
(If the Open Home Foundation were to also move feature requests from Discourse to an open-source, ethically-hosted issue tracker, great! But that could happen later. The main thing is that no Home Assistant user should ever be expected to have a Microsoft/GitHub account in order to file a feature request.)
I’m quite certain that you will get support for your Zigbee device a lot sooner if you do my suggested action. I’ve been using HA for 7-8 years and I don’t maintain a Github account, I’m sure you could do the same. You could always implement your code locally too if you don’t want it to exist on an evil portal.
It’s good to know the workaround exists - but as I say, it’s not a solution.
The Open Home Foundation is undermining its principles by telling users to use proprietary Microsoft accounts/services. (Is that even legal? A non-profit organisation’s founding principles can be binding, in some jurisdictions…)
I will mark this feature request thread as “solved” only when that gets fixed.
It’s a solution to your problem. A problem 99,9999% of other users don’t have. I think that is the best you will get, and I think you know that too.
If you think your workaround is a solution to the issue this thread is about, please re-read the thread.
HA users should never be told to post feature requests to GitHub. That’s the core problem this thread is about.
You can complain all you want, it is still the best option you have at the moment to get support for your Zigbee device. I’m not clicking through all your links, I am perfectly fine with Github (as is most of the IT community that uses it).
I’ll remind you of the bold text you wrote in the original post:
" Home Assistant users should be able to request new ZHA Device Handlers right here in the forum."
As I said: You can - right here in the forum - create a thread with your code - right here in the forum - and ask someone to help you do a PR - right here in the forum.
If you are that disinterested in what this thread is about, then why do you keep posting in it?
Did I give you a way to address the initial request or not? To remind you again:
Topic: “Way to request ZHA device handlers without involving Microsoft”
Your own summary of the request, quote:
Home Assistant users should be able to request new ZHA Device Handlers right here in the forum.
There’s nothing stopping you from doing this, technically or ethically (you are already using the forums so I am assuming there’s no evil or ethical issues there).
Well, I thought my OP was clear enough, but apparently not.
I have now amended that part to read: “Home Assistant users should be able to request new ZHA Device Handlers right here in the forum, without being told to post at GitHub instead.”
You need to read again. My first reply to you:
I’m sure if you create a thread where you paste your code, explain your views on Github and ask someone to paste it on Github for you someone will help you.
Now, what’s stopping you from doing this? Can you paste the code here and I can help.
Hi, Feature Requests are for HA backend only. Sorry. Please create feature requests for zigpy on zigpy’s organization page.