This is the forum archive of Homey. For more information about Homey, visit the Official Homey website.
The Homey Community has been moved to https://community.athom.com.
This forum is now read-only for archive purposes.
The Homey Community has been moved to https://community.athom.com.
This forum is now read-only for archive purposes.
Official
Comments
On the one hand it does cause confusion, and so each app should differentiate its functionality clearly in the documentation as some people might have a clear need for a particular variant.
On the other hand restricting similar contributions is not ‘open’ and discourages community submissions . Additionally the first app submitted may not be the most functional or well written and may even have bugs.
For Athom to regulate which app stays would be very fraught and time consuming so I understand their stance of letting them stand or fall on their merits.
When a second app is a fork of the first , as in this case, it’s even more awkward,... not to mention any PayPal donation system that each may solicit.
A few weeks ago Sprut found my homekit app and did a PR. He did a rewrite of the functions that actually add the devices to homekit, and changed the way how the app would behave in general. He actually made it possible to add any device (supported or unsupported) to homekit where an user could see in the Home app on his iPhone or iPad if it's supported or not. Not very clear for an average user in my opinion, other then that it keeps a TCP connection open for no reason at all. I merged his first PR with the Alpha branch and tested it with a few users and asked their opinion on it. Where i decided not to merge it in the beta branch. At this point Sprut decided to publish his fork of the homekit app to the app store.
Normally Athom wouldn't allow it, in this case they did for reasons still unknown.
Obviously Sprut is right in his post above. The underlying lib used (Has-node) is made by someone else, and is doing most of the work. I indeed didn't mention him in the readme, where he was mentioned in the first post of this topic before it was published to app store. I really just forgot to add it in again.
But there was a bit more to it then just importing the lib and write around the 1000 lines of code. First off the lib wasn't working for ARM and some depencies had to be recompiled to work with ARM. Honestly i never did this before and took me a few days before i rented a cloud server based on ARM to compile it on there and push it to my git repository. Even then it was still trial and error before i got it compiled and working.
Other then that, i had to start from scratch using the new web-api and a somehow difficult settings page. I do understand that Sprut feels like his PR is allot of work, but starting from 0 to what it is now was allot more.
Under all my apps users can find a PayPal donate button, so users can show their appreciation for the spare time i put in the app. This is in no way required to use the app at all! And i never asked any user to donate first before fixing an issue, adding a feature or even use the app.
I have no problems with a second homekit app in the app store, but to fork an app and change some of the code and put your own PayPal button below it was something i did had problems with. Athom made it clear to me that he had all the rights to fork and redistribute because of the ICS license used in the readme. I will change this in future app updates so it has the right license in there to avoid any of these problems in the future.
In my opinion the app store should be clear to all users, not just the advanced ones. When having 2 homekit apps that has the potential to be the same some day ( i actually decided not to include all the capabilities just to make it easier to debug since it was still in beta ) is going to confuse allot of people.
For that reason i decided to pull my app from the app store, just to avoid confusing among users plus Sprut is actively developing his repo. There has been allot of updates the last days, where i just lack spare time to do so. I will maintain my app in my own repo, and continue developing to my own needs.
I hope everyone understands. And if someone who donated doesn't agree (i certainly would understand, and would like to refund!) or having any other questions at all you can contact me on Slack or send me a PM on the forum.
Bas
Due to the submission of a forked app a discussion has happened about whether it was the right choice from us. We believe first and foremost in the openness of Homey and the platform. The approval of this fork was a hard choice, because we would have rather seen one app with combined strength, yet this was not possible.
The license of the original repository (ISC) stated that the source code may be copied, modified and published, and therefore we approved the fork. Where we have made a mistake, and it was my mistake, was that we allowed donation buttons which did not (originally) credit the original author. This was the main point of discussion between the community because it really did touch a few developer's feeling of justice.
As a result we have created a new set of guidelines, which you can find here (on the end of the page). Summarised it means that we will respect code licenses whenever a fork is submitted (and we still hope this is rarely necessary), and that donation buttons are not allowed whenever an app is based upon a fork.
Because the developer of the fork did not want to follow these new guidelines (and he has every reason to do so, as they were created after his submission) we have decided it's best to remove the app from the App Store and let users install the app directly from his GitHub.
We have tried to play the most neutral role in this, while balancing the needs of the Homey users and Developers at the same time.
I am always available for questions and discussion, because we have to create and maintain this brilliant community together!
- Emile
Emile asked me if i want to continue development. So i will.
They were all all working well in the forked version.
that sure would benefit all
thx for the homeykit app
It’s the only way my wife is able to do light things with her phone
In README all is described in detail. I thanked everyone and put the links to donations to all developers. https://github.com/sprut666666/com.sprut.homekit
I have to rewrite the interface and recompile the libraries - this will not be a fork ?
The more popularity with Homey - the more chaos
It's totally up to Sprut, he actually HAD a few options:
1. Change the PR. I am still confident i made the right choice. You don't want to confuse people to be able to add devices that aren't supported. It's a waste of resources as well.
2. He had the option to remove the PayPal buttons (where Athom doesn't allow PayPal buttons on forks) but he didn't want to.
@sprut
I would you to continue this discussion in another topic if you really need to.
Edit:
@sprut if you want to discuss with @swttt you know how to find him, in the end it's @swttt his app with his choice for stability and the guidelines of Athom.
Anyways, I still really love to be able to connect Homeys devices to Siri and am looking forward to all improvements. Keep up the good work!
If anyone still is having issues, let me know.
Currently adding some new capabilities, but need some users who would like to test before publishing it as beta since i don't own all device types.
First up are window blinds. Second up is the thermostat.
You can contact me on Slack or PM me on the forum
This means everyone still on beta will get the window blinds in there that has dim support.
Couldn't test this device myself, so i could made errors
besides switch, lights which devices will be available within Homekit?
This is the same library as used in homebridge, openhab and other projects. (In theory i could run homebridge now on Homey
Going to run some tests with that (performance wise), and see if it's worth replacing the current lib.