That’s the point. Explaining what we plan to do, get advice from the maintainer and his consense in advance would not harm 
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Please help. I do not know where and how to do it.
We are talking about website only, correct? For documentation the process is clear to me.
http://github.com/openhab/ contains various repositories related to various things
http://github.com/openhab/website - is for the web site you see on openhab.org
http://github.com/openhab/openhab-docs is for the openhab.org/docs/
How to do it? That’s a whole other topic. Which editor do you use?
None. Don’t we use any of these authoring tools?
EDIT:
I understand the concept and the process now. Unfortunately this is not feasible for me to make changes in the .vue files and submit them as a PR.
I already have ideas in my mind to add/change content, I need some mre pages, but leave the existing menu as is.
Does that create a problem?
Can I interprete your question about which editor I use as an offer to create html pages and submit these as a PR?
If I’m not mistaken the documentation is written in markdown
here is a link to the introduction page
https://github.com/openhab/openhab-docs/edit/main/introduction.md
the file extention is .md
it is just like a readme file on github
you format it just like on the forum here (almost)
heading text
You can edit it right there on github
clone a branch, do your edits, submit PR
Edit:
Here is a thread we used to create the Blockly documentation. The actual documentation in the first post got moved but the first dozen or so posts are Stephen, Rich and Jerome et al discussing how to develop and ultimately merge the documentation
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@Oliver2 I appreciate your enthusiasm and desire to get this going in a positive way. The world needs more of this sort of attitude. However, I think you need to approach this much differently.
Before you even begin thinking about websites, videos, and articles, you need a marketing strategy. People often jump straight to those end points without a clear understanding of what they’re trying to accomplish. You end up with a bunch of content that doesn’t have a cohesive message and often goes nowhere.
Your first point kind of hints at this, so I’m just giving you the technical term.
It’s a marketing strategy. But when you describe your plan in the first post, you’re a little too far ahead.
In my opinion, your second point isn’t going to work.
You’re presuming that everyone’s going to excitedly buy into your marketing strategy, but it’s pretty clear from that other thread that there’s very little agreement about what openHAB is and who it’s for. You’re also presuming that volunteers will sustain their interest.
If you don’t have timelines, then you don’t have a marketing strategy. What works now may not work next year. This doesn’t mean that you need to rush, but you need to have realistic milestones and deadlines. If openHAB didn’t have a development schedule, we might never get another release.
The way I’d go about it is to:
- Get the openHAB organization to strike a marketing committee (if there isn’t one already).
- Get people to commit to being on the marketing committee, and not just flake out if/when they get bored or frustrated. Even then, you’re taking them at their word (since no one’s getting paid).
- Have the marketing committee develop a marketing strategy for the organization’s approval.
- Recruit volunteers to develop websites, videos, articles, etc. that align with the approved strategy.
None of this can be accomplished through discussions in the openHAB community. You’ll just keep going around in circles (with people jumping in and out) until everyone gets tired of it. And then it’ll come up again three years from now when a person drops a one-liner post with a clickbait headline.
Side note: have any of you noticed that the person dropped that bomb on September 1 and never came back? They don’t actually care.
This is a red flag for me, because documentation and marketing are two very different things (I’ve done both). I support documentation that’s better for new users, but that’s known as technical writing. It doesn’t belong in a discussion about marketing, because docs have to work for all users–not just the audience that your marketing strategy targets.
A typical exercise is to build marketing personas–imaginary users who you describe in detail–so that you can visualize them when developing the strategy and tactics. The more character you give to a persona, the easier it is to see what will (and won’t) appeal to them about the product.
Jean is a chemical engineer in Montreal, divorced, with a son (14) and a daughter (10) who live part-time with their father. She’s tried home automation with Amazon/Google/Smartthings, but finds them to be frustratingly basic. Jean’s familar with open-source software and her son has talked about Raspberry Pi computers he uses at school, but she hasn’t used Linux in a long time and doesn’t want to spend a lot of time on it.
That’s just scratching the surface of a marketing persona. On her own, Jean might not be in the target audience for a marketing campaign…but maybe it’s something she could do with her kids. You would need maybe 10-15 more personas to get a sense of your overall audience and then hone in on the ones you can reach most effectively. That will guide you to what content should be produced.
Bottom line is that a lot of work goes into marketing strategy before you can even begin talking about content.
I’m not volunteering to get involved, because I don’t think any of this is necessary for an open-source software project. I don’t share the concern about openHAB’s existence being threatened, and wish people would stop fretting over an imaginary competition with Home Assistant. 
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Marketing is much more than Promotion, i.e producing ads, websites, videos etc.
We need to get 3 other P’s in order, too. The key question is for whom is this product made? Surely not for everyone? Most of my friends would be never be able to take OH into use. If we want to enable them, e.g. the mass market, to use OH changes to the first P, the Product are needed.
If we are not going to change the product, then we need to specify who exactly is the target customer? This is needed so that we can design the marketing plan correctly and address the most probable “buyers”.
Trying to adress the whole market requires enormous resources that companies like Siemens, Nike, McDonalds and other global giants have.
As we have very limited resources it is vital to choose the right, most receptive market segment, in order to produce results from the marketing. We can spend all our time and resources selling to the wrong customers and no one will buy. This is not a new problem, a lot of marketing books have been written about this very problem. There are simple tools, like Kotler’s 4Ps and Moore’s positioning statement, that are very helpful when trying to reach results with limited marketing budgets.
I suggest we do not re-invent the marketing wheel. 
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I think the most likely customer is an expert system integrator, who wants to sell and install home automation systems at higher profit than is possible with current commercial products.
IMO, what we ultimately want to attract are skilled developers who will hopefully contribute to the project and improve openhab further. This is what will ensure that openhab will continue to exist.
But having many “end users” will also give us recognition and support from vendors, although this is not something to be relied upon, so it is really a secondary goal, if it were to be a goal at all.
Most of the “expert” system integrators would probably fall in the “end users” category. It would be very rare for them to (have the skills to) contribute back.
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This is exactly what we are doing here.
Not possible as can be read in the other thread
I think, it does. Maybe you are overestimating this initiative here. We want to attract new users and new developers.
Ok. To me it is both, new developers AND new users.
Do you have some ideas how to attract new developers? Wouldn‘t a potential new developer start as an ordinary openHAB user first?
Does anybody know if we can measure new users?
A bad metric could be new accounts for this forum or for myopenhab. Is there any way to get anonymized, condensed data like new logins in the last 3 years per month or quarter?
Moore writes specifically about “innovative high tech products”, which is the category OpenHAB falls under, no? According to him, to cross the chasm the product must be adapted and tailored to the early adopters. My understanding is that OH as an “innovative hight tech product” is yet to cross the chasm. It also seems clear there is no interest to do tailoring or adaptation to the product.
Under this limitation I think the wise thing to do is to identify the niche we plan the product for and aim all resources to reach this niche.
I think we need to differentiate a little bit. If adoption means to change fundamental concepts (like thing/channel/items) that is out of our scope as openhab is based on 3rd party products. I would not touch this area. Other adoption areas which we can address here with our developers might be something which can be discussed, but then Insuggest to open another thread. It will be difficult to find developers for that.
However, taking this into account:
Maybe a list of required adoptions might attract new developers? I don‘t know. I am not a developer. In any case, a separate thread for this topic is required to keep focus fir each topic.
To attract developers, it’s probably enough to just do some more marketing. openHAB is already a fantastic product for those who love coding.
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I see. Thanks.
We need to address, that it is not required to code (anymore) in order to customize openHAB. You have the option to do so to get a maximum of individual customization but it is not required
Its not going to be easy. Technology stack openHAB is based upon, namely OSGi and Karaf become a nische. Peak of its popularity was around 2009. There is less companies investing in these, leading to the situation where new developers are not there. Libraries ignore necessity to support OSGi even if its just a manifest file with import/export packages.
However, there are some aspects where OSGi can shine. Each time when project need a plugin system, there is no better way. It gives you not only a plug-ability but also plugin lifecycle, integration hooks and wiring mechanisms working as first level citizen. It essentially allows you to design a working solution without hacks. It pays off for large enterprises (big&fat application servers used it under the neath) or complex solutions (such as Adobe AEM, Jahia, Liferay). Looking at openHAB - it might be one of largest uses beyond commercial land.
Now to the point - how to attract new developers - tell them its not a CRUD system and that they can design peoper solutions without being locked into spring framework.
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Why?
I think it’s very intuitive.
openHAB is a software to control and automate smart homes. It has an internal bus (in fact that is the B in openHAB). All data which is used in openHAB has to be “on” the bus.
Items are the representation of data on the openHABus.
So, Items are openHAB internal to do some stuff.
And a smart home will need external data as well - may it be hardware or software.
You will need a communication interface for each individual hardware, as most hardware is proprietary. So you will need one binding (maybe use the word driver for this part) per hardware and/or external data source.
And there may be more than one piece of hardware to control, even from one brand.
So the next level is the Thing, wich is the representation of a device.
It’s not that counterintuitive, a device is a Thing.
A Thing may have several independent features, so there are Channels for each feature.
To enable openHAB to use features from external hardware, you have to link Channels to Items, so that commands to Items will control the linked channel as well and on the other direction data from Channels will go to the Item to be available in openHAB.
As you did not mention the Bridge: there are external bus systems and a Bridge is the representation of a gateway to this bus. But as a gateway is sort of a device, it’s a thing itself
So:
Binding → Hardware/Software driver for every external source/sink
Bridge → representation of a gateway to an external bus system
Thing → representation of an external device (maybe a virtual one, e.g. think of astro:sun)
Channel → a piece of information and/or the option to control some part of a Thing
Item → openHAB internal representation of information and/or control features.
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I’m not sure I would agree with that statement. If openHAB developers had no interest in adapting the product, we would all still be using file configuration and DSL rules. I think the developers have done an amazing job of making openHAB easier to use. (easier… not easy) I think the developers show a willingness to make changes that are clearly for no other reason then to make openHAB easier to use.
I don’t think openHAB is mature enough for that use case to be the main target user base. I also think we all agree openHAB is not for everyone.
The following is my personal opinion.
I think the target user is someone who has already purchased some smart home commercial products. They have already spent some of their own hard earned money on smart light bulbs or a smart thermostat or any numbers of the bizzilion smart home products out there. They have their smart light bulbs working, they loaded the app on their phone. They are already enjoying the benefits of a smart home. But… they are frustrated that there is not more integration of all their smart home products. They have fifty different apps on their phone. They wish that all their smart home products could work together. They wish for one single app that can tie all their smart home products together. An app that they can use to see an overview of all their smart home products, allow all of them to ‘talk’ to each other and control them all together with one single app.
There is your target user
How to market to this crowd? Well… look at the marketing that drew them into spending their own hard earned money on home automation already. Look at the marketing for phillips hue lights, nest thermostats, ring door bells
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Setting up OH is insanely more difficult than setting up a Phillips hue light and app. If we market OH to these customers, I am afraid we will end up with a lot of negative experiences.
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