Your question What should mainainters do in these cases, what do you think ? so to answer that, I think that they could simply point out, just like Fleker in my example ok, looks good, jus do the sign off
And it’s fine to not have time to continue development. Just afaik that in this case it would be nice to create issue/add to the readme ‘no longer maintained, help wanted’. I mean to me it’s unclear if someone wants to take over or to help what are the steps ? Are there procedures who can merge, etc. Therefore this thread.
Ok, understand your example.
Regarding your second question, anybody can contribute code to the different repos. Except Z-Wave and Zigbee Binding, the maintainer group are the only ones to merge or reject PRs, whereas anybody can comment on a PR.
I have checked the repo and both PRs could have been merged due to the small patch exception policy.
I don’t think that anyone has looked at them already.
This is the same problem we hav in other repos too.
Only a few (or in this case 1) selected maintainters, which seem to be very busy those days.
It’s opensource and we have to deal with that of course.
Anyway it could be named as a “problem”.
And one step further:
Even if we find one to help out in this repo ther is still no shared knowledge about pushing an update to google.
This is something that should be shared/clarified too, to a wider audience.
When things stops in developement, “someone” needs to put it into focus. Otherweise this will become a big problem for the open source project.
This time Gytis, (a user), did that.
I have to be honest with you. I know what I´m about to say it may not be a popular opinion, but it´s how it is. I simply cant help telling my opinion when things like these appears.
In my opinion, its a task for the board of the foundation to put any kind of problem (which can/will hurt the goal of the project/openhab) into focus. That beeing lack of developement and/or missing propoganda for openhab or anything else.
The foundation is in charge of placing the strategy for openhab as well. Ie, where to go, and how to get there.
This doesnt mean the foundation has to solve all problems themselves. But they need to put it into focus and try to deal with it, like trying to get new/more developers, as well as maintainers to continue where others left, just as well as telling/showing the rest of the world about openhab.
Thats my basic opinion.
It doesnt mean anyone else (developers, maintainers and users) who care for the project shouldnt take this into consideration as well. We all should. But we have to be clear on this rather specific matter. First of all, its the foundation. If/when the foundation doesnt, it will fall apart one way or another.
You completely misunderstood the foundations role. It has absolutely no influence on development matters. The foundations goal is customerism and customer safety. Like I wrote in several other topics, it is an informational goal only.
That may be the problem (my problem) in a nutshell. I simply fail to understand how a foundation with a rather specific interest in a specific free software would have no influence in its development, yet providing services and hosting for openHAB.
On the foundation site, it says the foundation focus on openHAB.
Albout the foundation:
" The openHAB Foundation e.V. is a registered non-profit organisation. Its purpose is to educate the public about the possibilities that Free software offers in the domain of smart homes."
I believe its quite close to impossible to educate about something which isn´t exsisting. And it´ll be a true suicide to educate in something which isn´t developing, specially regarding smarthome systems.
The foundation need openHAB continuing developing.
And I will be honest too here.
The foundation role has been stated many times in this forum and it was always stated, that development is not included in the foundation tasks.
So my impression is more that you are of course able to understand this, but don’t want to accept the foundations decision on this.
This may be your opinion and it also may be worth a discussion.
But as said above, this is nothing special for the google assistant integration and is more and more becoming a talk between you and hmerk.
So this is a bit of the wrong place now.
What we should reach in this thread should be a statement from @MARZIMA on how the maintenance state is and gather some more information of how the google assistant app is published and how we can spread the knowledge and improve the process of development for this integration.
I truely dont understand the role of the foundation 100%, when you say it has no influence on the development.
You have to understand, I look at this from another perspective. How can a foundation exsist without any influence in what the foundation is based upon. The foundation need the development. So how come it has no influence… It really makes very little sense to me…
You´re right, this is probably not the correct place to discuss this role of the foundation. But I have no idea where a better place is then. And in this case, GA integration just became an example cause I believe its highly important.
This is exactly my point here.
Yoy say “we should”. I say “someone” should. The same “someone” should be here in all developing matters, (at least the important ones). This “someone” should be a specific part of the organisation, (which I believe suits best in the foundation. But thats what your saying it doesnt, which I have to accept ofcouse).
Without this “someone”, there is a rather important missing link in the whole structure, which is highly needed specially in opensource projects.
Its a bit of a paradox - Dealing with automation and smarthome system we´re learning to ask ourselves, "what if… ". But nobody seems to ask the same regarding continuing development, as far as I understand. At least noone is organised in the organisation to take care of that (or trying to).
But “what if” Marzima do have abandonded the GA integration/openhab. Then what? Was his work important for openHAB´s exsistense? Should there be someone here to deal with it?
Questions like that seems to be lacking in interest.
In an ideal world, there would be a team of developers ready to continue. But thats often not the case in opensource matters, not unless someone has build/created that team, (or tried to) and taken care of whatever developing issues that may appear.
Thats what seems to be missing here. (Correct me if I´m wrong). And thats the issue I´m concerned about. And what I truely believed was part of the foundation role.
I´m not saying this is easy, and maybe not even possible at all. I do know the game play of opensource. I dont blame anyone who have tried. But I´m getting rather concerned when reading, there doesnt seem to be anyone out there trying at all.
Exactly What that attitude, you´re already taking part of the missing link I´m concerned about.
That is a task which, if I understand correctly, the foundation is prevented from doing by law because of the way it’s set up as a non-profit under German law.
No, the foundation is in charge of managing donations and performing communications about openHAB. It is not involved in the development of OH and I believe forbidden from contributing to the development beyond what it already does.
Anyway, conflicts along and between maintainers should be raised to the Architecture Counsel.
Just to understand better the “governance” (I use quotes because I understand is opensource):
shouldn’t the Architecture Council take care of important issues ,for example a crucial feature/part of the project not being maintained anymore? (like could be the case of Google Assistant integration)
As far as I understand, the law is from the point of view of money, as in profit/non profit. Since it s non profit, I see no reason why any law should prevent this… But I have no idea if the german laws is that different on the aspect.
But…
You´re both right…
I´m sorry I wasn´t aware of the Governance of the openHAB Project. It´s exactly what I was concerned about, (I thought was missing). Seems like the AC do exsists to take care of issues, specially issues like an important integration, like GA is, beeing abandonded. Thats very good.
What I do wonder though is the very last sentence of the page. It says:
“The openHAB Foundation’s General Assembly can request that the AC is dissolved and has to be newly appointed.”
To me this do sound like the foundation (general assembly) do have something to say about the developement. Or what exactly does this sentence mean?
From what I understand, in Germany, one sets up a certain type of non-profit and based on the type the organization is prevented from engaging in certain activities (e.g. a communications non-profit cannot engage in development or sales. This is also why they’re is no store here where I can buy OH t-shirts and stickers.
I think it’s just a check and balance so that there is no one part of OH that has unchecked power. The AC is an arbiter, not directly involved in development. So the ability if the foundation board to oust the whole council and replace it really doesn’t directly impact development.
It sounds odd, and I believe this is not true according to EU… But Germany may have it own set of laws on this matter…
Except for the foundation then!
As I understand, AC define the overall developing strategy (or architechture if you like) for openhab. Maintainers makes the strategy happen from a set of rules.
Or perhaps I should ask.
How can AC, “…keep the project successful and healthy”, without beeing directly involved in the developing process?
No, the foundation has no direct influence on development.
The AC only arbitrates among the maintainers. But it cannot dictate to the maintainers.
The foundation can only maintain communications and disband the AC but they have no influence along the maintainers at all.
The only group that has any real influence over the development of OH is the developers and maintainers.
And if you need a check on the board of the foundation, well they are voted in by members of the foundation. Anyone can become a voting member by donation
That’s incorrect. An over all strategy is worthless without developers to work on it. So the AC is limited to cross cutting concerns (e.g. the most recent thing to come up was created if a secure way to report security issues) and to arbitrate problems among the maintainers. The maintainers dictate the over all developing strategy by the fact that they are the ones doing the work.
There is no top down power that dictates the direction of OH. The maintainers dictate the direction of OH by coding what to develop and merge into the baseline.
By arbitrating when a maintainer wants to make a change that impacts lots of other parts of OH, by arbitrating when maintainers on a single repo cannot come to a decision or come into an argument, and managing some project wide concerns like the previously mentioned security reporting.
I really understand your frustration, but it the last 2 months I ve been almost unavailable due to private issues.
It is not easy for me to handle as it is a full time job to maintain it.
I will do my best to be more available and will bring in new updates really soon.
But still, you are all invited to support and help to improve it.
I think it makes sense to involve some of you in the deployment process. I will try to automate as much as possible, so it will be no diffcult thing.
Sorry if I made you guys unhappy.
We will definately will continue to make this integration better and greater…
@MARZIMA Certainly no need to be sorry Friend.
Life happens, anyone that doesn’t know that obviously doesn’t have a life.
Openhab is going strong. TONS of great contributors, Too many to name.
When I hit a wall there are many other OH projects I have to tackle, so I just move forward.
Plodding along is part of the process. (unless your Rick or Kai).
So much to learn!
People should just move on to a different project or just kick in some help if they have the ability.
Thank you for your help from all of noobs that are still learning so we can also be a positive influence to the forum.
Thanks again to ALL,
Steve-
You didnt make me unhappy. You made me worried.
I can not blame anyone for doing a volunteer and free job, and not be available all the time. It wasnt my intention either. You have already done a great job! You´re not the problem - Openhab is (me, the users, everyone else who care for openhab!).
My worries goes to a situation where an important integration seems abandonded, and no one is there to do or say anything. Thats not good.
In the mean time I’ve started from scratch. Already have support for OpenClose, OnOff, LockUnlock, SetFanSpeed, SetModes, StartStop traits and GATE, SWITCH, GARAGE, DOOR, LOCK, FAN devices (sync + execute, no query yet) with Alexa inspired metadata, eg.
Prototype seems to be working fine, but there is a lot of work todo like handle groups, create docker container, add some fakeauth to skip myopenhab integration, and write tests (cause this mapping is way more complex than I anticipated)
So my goal is to have some sort of MVP which can be self hosted and directly used with local openhab instance (advance config needed). If my velocity does not drop, that should take a month or so. But oh well it’s very easy to underestimate
Have success with it. I think now you start to learn how much work and time these things will take.
Everybody is quick in crying if some features are not there, but how many actively join forces and contribute.
What that attitude, you´re already taking part of the missing link I´m concerned about.
