I read here in multiple places that attracting more users could override developpers capabilities to handle requests, issues, flood the forum. I see it differently : this could help onboard new developpers. The graph showing the decline of OH results in Google search is a real concern. Maintainers have always struggled in PR reviewing capacity this can lead users to quit because bug solving is too slow. I’m more concerned by the low number of developpers (and especially core maintainers).
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Can you please point me to where things are at (relevant PRs and issues/discussions) with this?
Funny, how this thread turned in to the what OH is really good at: problem-solving. 
While improvements here and there are always great… the core issue is public visibility for “the product (OH) exists”, and “it’s easy to use”. Many users a lazy, new generation, point and click, no tolerance for a challenge; maybe I am pushing a stereotype, but my kids and grand kids have a short attention span (if any at all).
I guess, many new users simply want to set-up something, really quickly. And ‘this’ we (IMHO) should aim for.
Users who want to play more, will (eventually) realise, what has been said on this forum many times “home-automation is hard”, and are then prepared to dig deeper into the technology/automation system.
I don’t want to kill the discussion… I find it very useful. I also don’t expect developers to do the marketing.
And marketing (not advertisements), more so social marketing, is required. Maybe donations to OH can be made more visible. E.g., ask “like what you are seeing, please (or feel free) support the project”. I have not much of an idea of Patreon, may this would work for OH as well. These funds could then be used to sponsor OH on social media?!
As some said WRT developer attraction; how can OH attract developers if most don’t know it exists.
Also, as much as ‘fun’ may be the driver to people to develop, I am sure the inclination to develop for a cause is more rewarding when more people use the fruits of their labour. Browse on GitHub, and look for stale and abandoned projects; the less activity (in dev and download) the quicker they die — this is simply a fact.
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There’s also this WEIRD phenomena I’ve observed in my local community. If you charge for something, e.g. a regular activity, people would value it more, more would attend, and they would attend consistently, than when you do it for free. When it was free, nobody would turn up, and if they did, only once or twice. Once we started charging money for the exact same activity, we’d have to have a waiting list! It’s soooo bizarre!
I love the fact that myopenhab is free, but I wonder if the same thing applies here.
I think every update for Thunderbird, AdBlock, and whatever browser plugin comes up with a donate page.
And I have donated to quite a few application I use on a regular basis; which I wouldn’t if that donate page would not have come up.
IMO, no amount of sponsored articles / ads will change anything if when people come and check out openhab they get repelled because it’s too hard to use / understand.
Only the very technically minded people would stick around, and that’s probably only after trying out the others and getting frustrated with their limitations.
We see openhab from a different perspective because we already understand how it works.
As you know if you put a free fridge out the front of the house it will still be there. If you put $50 on it then someone steals it! Bizarre!
I still don’t know how it works and I have been using it for years.
HA was a pain I didn’t like the yaml and have to check the config and then have to restart it all the time. What was good was it did fire up and find stuff first time but after that it wasn’t that great.
I like Openhab because I can write sloppy code and have it indented all over the place and maybe it would work. 
My system is not fancy by any means and I just want to add “features” that I need and then forget about it.
I have used Mister house (perl) and Domotiga in the past and they were ok for what I wanted as well.
At the end of the day I don’t really care what is controlling the place just so long as it works and i am happy with it.
Openhab widgets are great.
Please, don’t start this discussion again. We had this already many times and the answer still ist the same. We cannot charge for using myopenhab for non profit state or the foundation. Furthermore, if you make it a paid service, you need to define SLA’s and you need people to give support to keep those SLA’s…
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You probably misunderstood my meaning. I was not suggesting that openhab starts charging people for service. I was merely discussing and exploring the reasons why it is less popular.
No, did not misunderstand, just wanted to set the point here before a discussion starts.
I now that you do not want to make it a paid service.
IMHO there is no intention to make OH a “product for begginers”. If that was the case important usability points mentioned above, such as thing autodiscovery, binding auto install, graphical view of the model would have been developped a long time ago.
Not to mention brilliant technologies, such as zigbee2mqtt and esphome, that have far better HA interface. Was there any effort from OH to fund their development in order to have a better interface with OH ?
So why market OH openly ? Wouldn’t that be risky until these points deserve more attention ?
Now the facts: HA is growing and OH is not. Is this a threat for OH future ? Not being able to atrack new users also means that no new developers will join the project.
IMO if there is a serious intention to grant OH’s future the “usability” and “interface” aspects should receive higher priority. So many great technologies have died in favour of more popular ones, let’s hope OH doesn’t add to the defunct list.
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That depends on how you look at the data. I didn’t start using openHAB by searching for openHAB, I searched for something I wanted to do with something I already had (maybe it was an Alexa thing, or some new Zigbee lamps I had) but I started using openHAB without ever searching for it.
This youtube channel by @s89511 has some openhab tutorial / showcase videos. It’s in Italian with English subtitle
(11) DomoticsDuino - Smart Home, Flight Sim e altro - YouTube
It would be really awesome if the videos could be done in English too.
Issue is Rework Rules Documentation · Issue #1855 · openhab/openhab-docs · GitHub. There are no open PRs at the moment. And this mainly covers just rules. But my intent was to start with rules and gradually move on to Items and Things and so on. Those need less work though I think.
Getting Started also needs some updates for OH 4. The first time user’s wizard is not the same any more and there are new features that should be touched upon.
Funds collected by The openHAB Foundation I think could be used for this. However, we are back to the question, who is going to do it? If someone were to volunteer, as @hmerk has mentioned multiple times, I’m sure the Foundation will step up financially where feasible.
OH has no mechanism to fund development of any sort.
I get incredibly frustrated when I see posts like this that completely ignore the progress that OH has made over the years and the focus that has been spent on usability and interface. If you go through the release notes and read the details of the PRs you will find that 75-90% of them are either directly addressing some usability issue or are changes that are a prerequisite to make some other usability improvement.
I can think of little more demoralizing to the developers than this. Hundreds of hours are spent ojn usability improvements and yet the complaint is “why isn’t usability a higher priority?”
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Sorry, that was not my intention. I use OH since OH2 and I’m aware of the improvements. I was referring explicitly to the usability items in my post, all of them collected from posts prior to mine. I’ve only added that tools like Z2M, esphome and others have direct interfaces with HA but not with OH and nobody seems to be worried. I think OH team should make something about it.
I’m confortable with OH4 but we should realize that the initial contact is not as friendly as with HA, specially in auto detection. Take this as an example
In the past 10 years of my professional carrer I have been dealing with PSIM and control room software solutions (and I am confident to say that home automation is a kind of micro PSIM solution). I have had tons of discussions with companies (in our context: users) planning to implement such a solution. There are two dominant factors for deciding for a specific brand of such a solution:
- interfaces: can you integrate all your (main) subsystems?
- how do you implement processes and how does a user work with such a solution?
We should not be focussing too much on how to transform all the interesting information about our fantastic openHAB solution to a new website. We need to focus on potential users who visit our website that they immediately get attracted by answering a new user‘s most important two questions (see above).
I see it as a very important task to find more users (even if it is not reflected in the constitution of openhab e.V.). But we need to think about the future, which means finding new users, developers, contributors.
Having said this, I think we need to establish two TASK FORCES (maybe a few more):
- WEBSITE: rework our website‘s landing/home page and address USER‘s requirements on top level (and not hidden somewhere) to make them feel comfortable to start their first attempt of implementing a home automation solution with openHAB (see questions 1 and 2 above)
- PUBLIC RELATIONS: Increase press visibility. I do not think that it is the community‘s job to do that job. It is the foundation‘s job. We can add ideas, write text blocks, but the main job here to get the word out is with the foundation. If nobody has time for that, no problem, we need to hire somebody who can create and push press campaigns. If there is no money, we can donate or simply start a call to all users to donate, the same way as wiki does it every other year.
If there are some supporters and the foundation defines a strategy here, I would volunteer for task force #1
EDIT:
I want to add that we need to do whatever our next steps are in a coordinated way. Foundation needs to set the framework, the basic mesagges and we, as contributors can start our work.
The approach, if somebody calls for (important) improvements, to react like „yeah, go ahead and start“ will lead to nowhere. Nobody wants to invest time and in the end there are always complaints that it is not good enough. First things first:
- STRATEGY (what do we want to improve, what are the main messages, what do we want to achieve?)
- EXECUTION (call for contributors)
If there is a plan, you‘ll find more contributors
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I’m trying to do something similar at Country level (currently trying to open an OH section in existing home automation forums in Portugal).
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Waiting for direction from the foundation is unlikely to go anywhere. This is still in the “someone must do something!” category. Don’t wait for direction because it’s not going to happen. But if you come up with a strategy I’ve little doubt the foundation will do what it’s legally permitted to do to support the effort.
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It is already in the preamble of the foundation:
„It (openHAB) has gained a large community worldwide, is further developed by numerous developers and is used by a large user base. This situation must be preserved and further expanded so that there is a permanent alternative to closed, commercial systems.“
Sorry Rich, the foundation has to do some guidance at least here.
I can‘t empasize enough, first we (contributors) need a clear goal, then we can take actions.
EDIT:
I don‘t know if there is an advisory board established. If yes, ok, let’s talk about if they can take the strategic part. If not, then we might consider electing such a board. It does not have to be an advisory board in a legal sense. But an advisory board which is elected by the community and is setting some strategic directions of the openHAB software (comparable to the developer advisory board).
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