@splatch As mentioned above: We want to continue keeping openhab-core as a framework, so other adopters will still be able to use this as a basis and it won’t be tied to the openHAB distribution. From the wording, those would then be “based on the openHAB Core Framework”. But effectively, most companies anyhow do not do any mention, so there isn’t really much change.
Regarding governance: As no company is willing to actively participate, the openHAB community is anyhow already maintaining this code - so moving it will make a lot of things much simpler. And note that openHAB has more than 30 different repos/components by now and all of them require some clear process/governance, so this is anyhow something we have to deal with - and now is a good moment for it.
Please make textual configuration the default way to configurate things! There are so many restraints using gui based configuration and as someone who has to maintain multiple instances this only creates problems.
A nice compromise would be a configuration format which is human and machine readable (e.g. yaml).
The configuration gui could then just create/modify those files. More advanced users can create files directly while newbies could use the gui to create the files.
The startup process has at least one open issue on ESH’s Github which will presumably be moved to OH during this transfer process.
:+1 This. Yes. We come up with great ideas but there is no one to say “yes, do that”. I look forward to seeing what the governance mechanism looks like and what the flow would be from discussions like the one I linked to above would go from discussion on the forum to issue on github to implementation to release (particularly this last part).
As someone who has self dubbed himself the non-technical user advocate, I’d like to be kept in the loop on this. I’ll definitely be watching the architecture topic area.
I think this will be painful in the short term but put OH in a better place for the long term. I look forward to what the future brings! Thanks for the announcement!
Yes, an exciting announcement indeed. Thank you for the update on openHAB’s future. Happy to pitch in on removing the references from the documentation.
thanks for the update. Somehow it is a pitty and in the other hand there is a big chance to make things simpler.
You can fully count on me, as maintainer and also on home-iX with our support in this hard time and path. We need to make sure to keep the Framework approach for companies using OH-core than. On the other hand I agree, we must louder communicate and spread the word. A good thing is, that I assume that most commercial usage will than need to mention OH and not ESH anymore. At least on our side we will start to communicate this, when we really have this situation.
Good question. Yes at some point it will as the future of the Eclipse Market place itself with regards to Smart Home is not clear. If Eclipse Smart Home would discontinue it would not add any value to have the Market Place for the eclipse organisation. Since it’s a (under)valued way to get new (beta) bindings to users I would expect there will be a replacement in openHAB.
openhab2-addons has been switched from EPLv1 to EPLv2 already (thanks @hilbrand!). Please note that this will likely require some updates on many existing PRs, such as re-running the license header updates.
Anyway - I guess in 5 years tons of homes will be connected and smart. Please let us take care that companies can use openhab or an openhab-based system as the core of their maybe commercial system! Will that be still possible if ESH is getting stopped?
@Kai: can you please clarify and reassure us that you will continue being involved in openHAB as much as before and that you only give up with ESH ? At least, that is what I hope…
See above: “We would like to keep openhab-core in a “framework-style” similar to ESH, so that it is possibly to package it in different ways and that it is not only usable by the openHAB distro.”
See above: “please be re-assure, that although I step down as a project lead of ESH, I stay fully committed to openHAB and its community!”
The withdrawal of all full-time developers by Deutsche Telekom, the lack of other companies willing to take responsibility for the core framwork as well as the disengagement of the Eclipse Foundation raises the question whether the openHAB community and the openHAB Foundation can increase their efforts to absorb the loss (at least partly).
I’m still convinced that we need more (not less) full-time development engagement into the project as there are very important tasks which aren’t usually be done by spare-time enthusiasts and that are, in some cases, even now a bottleneck already. Also, I’m aware that many users are willing to fund general core framework development if there would be an attractive and easy way to do it.
Maybe this is also the time to dicuss and rethink how we can, on a long-term basis and with a growing community, setup a core development and maintenance funding that is not necessarily dependent on any major commercial involvement. Maybe our community is big enough to bring something substantial on it’s way, but maybe it’s also still too small. Anyhow, probably it’s better to start these discussions too early than too late.
If I can help in any way with our upcoming organisational/governance challenges, let me know.
A lot of communities are doing this nowadays. The entire web-page source code is open source as well btw.
Personally I’d love to work more on OH, but yeah, time and other duties.
The good thing is: The eclipse foundation made sure we are not violating 3rd party rights / patents.
And OSGi made sure that single parts can be swapped out with better variants at any time, so that code smelling is not that big of an issue.