Actually Home Assistant dies that with just a free trial to start. They have been able to employ some developers full time in addition to meeting their resource needs They have enhanced their cloud too.
They will happily accept your donation, I believe they are not allowed to advertise which is why the forum has no banners flashing in your face. Since I am not part of the foundation I can say it without it being advertising, click the link and sign up or make a once off donation, it is up to you if you want to donate to help cover the costs of what you use.
openHAB’s foundation means that more/all proceeds go to supporting costs and not to wages.
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Thank you, will for sure do that.
The foundation is incorporated in Germany as a communications type charity. They can advertise and support infrastructure that enables communications about openHAB. They can even provide services in support of openHAB.
But they cannot sell things and they cannot sell services. As a legal entity they are not incorporated as in such a way to allow that.
@JB_63, it’s not openHAB Foundation policies or bylaws, it’s the laws of Germany which dictate this. The openHAB Foundation would have to reincorporate as a different type of entity to enable them to sell stuff.
I don’t think there is anything that says they cannot put advertisements on the forum or elsewhere (I could be wrong), but I can’t imagine a world where those on the board would ever agree to such a thing. I haven’t followed the finances of the foundation very closely, but I think that they are pretty good. It is not a lack of money that is holding the foundation back from doing anything that it’s allowed to do, such as adding more virtual servers to the myopenhab.org service and the like.
tl;dr: the openHAB Foundation can accept donations. If you are in Germany it counts as a charitable donation. The openHAB Foundation can not sell merchandise (e.g. openHAB T-Shirts) nor sell services. They would lose their charity status in Germany.
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Thank you for clarifying @rlkoshak and others. I was not sure as to the logic/mechanism of this.
I find it interesting though that, across the English channel, another company builds/sells hardware (and mugs and t-shirts) and yet they qualify a charitable foundation. We use their hardware routinely in small projects. I guess the ‘definitions’ for charitable vary across the EU and the laws of the land as well … but that’s a whole different discussion.
I can’t speak to the EU but there is a type of charity in Germany that can raise money by selling merch and services, but openhAB isn’t one of them.
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