Open sourcing the HC2 software

[budda 5]

I know this is controversial for a company but has there been any consideration to speed up fixing the sorry state of HC2 v4 by possibly open sourcing the code base we have installed on our silver boxes and allow 3rd parties to offer Git pull requests to fix things quicker than a just a few developers in Poland?

It might also help in debugging the issues even if the person can't fix them.

Competitors to the HC2 product may use the code, but at the same time Fibaro can concentrate more on their hardware arm and marketing all their stuff which sits on top of their open source controller.

Might help push the whole system forward and calm some of the frustration...

[Thomas Cardif 0]

+1

[lindehoff 0]

I think this would be a brilliant idea. Fibaro dosen't make any money on the software its the hardware we buy.

A big +1 from me.

[arcticblue 6]

+1

(it would seem that Fibaro's strength is more on marketing and features than software and quality)

[hvb83 1]

+1 but right now their HC2 still seems like a cash-cow. So it might take a couple of months before sales really plummet and Fibaro realizes they have to do something drastic. For a company that even won't share their roadmap for new products, it's not realistic to assume they will ever open up their software to the community.

Though, if you look at the past, there have been some pretty darn successful opensource projects, some of which even became number one in their field. Squeezebox paved the way for multi-room audio and they became so successful that Logitech bought them (and killed them, but that's another story

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At the same time, the business model that Fibaro uses is about the same as Synology, who are also number one in their field. The only difference is that Synology's service level is outstanding, the reliability is much better than what most people could ever achieve by themselves and the ease of use is a huge USP. So it is possible, but the company has to have a different mindset about how to fulfill customer satisfaction. I think Asians have a somewhat different approach in that matter; they didn't invent LEAN for nothing.

[rb338 5]

+1, but I don't think it'll ever happen. Why? Because the HC2 is just an Intel x86 pc (Atom) with Z-Wave transmitter. IIRC it's running on a custom Debian build. Making the software open source enables users to create custom HC2's for free. Simply buy your own pc, slap Debian on it and you're done.

HC2 is kind of like Apple Macs. The software is "free" as in they don't charge any money directly for it, but you pay with it when you buy the hardware.

[budda 5]

One option could be to split the project in to two parts and they speak with each other via the documented public API.

Open source of:

The zwave engine and Fibaro API

Closed source for Fibaro to hold on to:

The nice interface and scene builder

This could allow other vendors to build their own HC2 front end UI that talks to the same engine via the same API.