Its great to hear they are doing well, and that they are trying to get into market with their own hardware. I do not track very carefully what HA does, but Iāve noticed there was some hardware they (or their community) promoted. Now, with their own hardware platform, they can try to build another revenue stream to feed operations/r&d and so on. This is relevant for one more reason - with size of their community they actually can fight for some part of consumer market, which would be a huge win for open source movement as a whole. It would prove that it is possible to build a mainstream product while remaining a open source project. Many have tried that, very few (any?) succeeded. I havenāt seen many of these in past, especially touching hardware aspects. I could mention i.e. openmoko.
Iāve read comments section on Verge, and one comment was spot on (also aligned with polish part of my brain), that the move so far is purely virtual. The foundation they have launched and company is constituted from same folks, so there will be no real difference in how things are operated. They retain control over project through another legal entity. It will be interesting to watch how things will evolve, now its to early to make any assumptions. The trademark is still owned by Nabu Casa (note that āopenHABā trademark is not owned by openHAB foundation), they advertise buying hardware and cloud subscription from Nabu Casa and do not have any clear way on how to āpartnerā with their foundation other thanā¦ spending time on projects or money on hardware.
Kudos for them and their unquestioned success. Lets hope it will evolve further than declarations.