How community developers get awarded by Athom

On one side athom has to run a business too, and I think the balance between keeping the users/developers happy and the business finances can impact each other. If you compare it to Apple/Android, the app market is not all that different, ofcourse in a completely different scale, but how big and solid would you think their app market would be if there were absolutely nothing in it for the developers? I think it would be absolutely useless.

For an example, if @TedTolboom stopped his developement, removed the apps from the app store, or simply just stopped updating/maintaining his apps, it would impact my system to the point where I would consider other systems. I wouldnt be able to control any of my thermostats, AC, Xiaomi devices, door locks and so on.

And there is a lot more people like him that keeps throwing out solid and usefull apps for nothing in return, except for their own use basically.

So you guys at athom should lock yourself in a room until you figure out how to make the developers feel appreciated and get something in return, without making Athom financially unstable…

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Just to clarify, I have a job and I am not here looking to make money but you are right there are many many ways that i it could be incorporated.

This is a hobbie - and I will continue to wrestle with the rest API/webAPI/SDKAPI for so long as I get enjoyment from it.

I am going to make a broad generalisation, which maybe is incorrect and say, I think most the people who create apps are in the same situation.

There have been quite a few red flags recently in regards to the direction in which Athom is heading and where that will leave the developers.

But I really do enjoy my homey, and maybe all this talk about ensuring evil developers don’t ruin your homey by having to much access - or ninja hackers in your house spoofing your LAN IP addresses is just talk.

I have a 100% secure device which can’t be hacked and doesn’t crash already - it’s called a rock.

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Ofcourse this is a hobby for the developers that doesn’t work at Athom, and that is the way its supposed to be. But that does not make the system any less “fragile” to developers finding other hobbies. People change interest, hobbies or it gets boring because there is nothing in it for them, and it seems pretty clear to me that athom can not handle the workload of making every app by them selves, while maintaining the system itself.

I agree with Rocodamelshe: 220 Euro for a second Homey and a NDA is a no go for me. I did not sign the NDA and therefore not in the AATP. I won’t discuss the reason why i did not. It is because of the good relation with the brands and other developers and for the current users i will try (best effort) to support users and new devices. But given the current situation i’m very limited (lack of docu and limited codingskills ) and thanks to other developers i can manage for now.

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I can tell you why I don’t sign them, in general: “Your product and/or your software isn’t unique, and I’m not committing to a legal one-way-street (which an NDA almost always is) that may limit me in my job”.

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I created a topic in which I humbly ask Homey users to make donations to buy a development/test Homey.

The question from the OP still stands tho.

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Just wanted to post the same. Funny thing going one. Promoting on one side but lacking some nurturing on the other side

At least they now acknowledge community apps and the developers this way :+1:

Out of the top 5 apps, how many can you still install on version 2?
i see two that are not compatible… and are just grayed out

I appreciate a lot how much effort developers put in to their apps (and i know Athom do too), I would happily donate a “coffee” to the developers that i use apps for, from the outside tho it looks, things look like this at times
user finds a issue -->
reports it to the developer -->

then

  • developer puts some time in and fixs the issue (yay)
  • you find out the app is abondonware
  • developer says they are waiting for Athom to fix a “thing” and its been waiting over a year now

From a user point of view, the app store should time stamp updates for all apps, and make release/change notes mandatory.

How can they promote LED Ring collection when it isn’t even compatible with 2.0?

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Just a matter of what u wanna read @Xtasy

And the developer just made the led ring collection app compatible with 2.0, just waiting approval. Cheers @OpenMind_NL!

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Good way for Athom to “persuade” developers to move their app to v2: publish it in a top 5 and sit back to see the developer get flooded with reports that their app isn’t v2-compatible :expressionless:

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I fully agree with what you wrote. Extreme appreciation for @TedTolboom even thou I’m not that dependent on his apps like you are (I posses only one remotec device) I can imagine how big impact his apps have on the prospective and current user base of Homey. I must say that my paranoia is keeping me from using more community developed apps but if I give in it will most likely be Xiaomi and I would definitely accept paying some amount for the app itself.

@Bram Are you a bit afraid of @TedTolboom. :grinning::grinning::grinning::grinning:

Since all community apps are open source, you can fork the respective repositories and update them regularly. In the case where a developer decides to remove their apps from the app store (although personally, I think that Athom should never accept any requests from developers to remove their apps from the app store; the app was published by the developer with an open source licence that allows Athom to keep publishing it), you will at least have the opportunity to sideload the app using the command line installation tool.

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But then again if you don’t know how to update the respective repositories you will have to rely on another dev. Its an endless circle.

Agreed, it’s not a simple solution :frowning:

You can always ask another developer to adopt the poorly orphaned app :wink: