Exactly, Should I remove all my apps?
I wonāt do that, at least not now until they ask things like NDA or other weird things. But it doesnāt feel good at all to cash out on the back of all the people who help make homey great. Luckily I switched to Home Assistant a few years ago.
I think very few will buy a new Homey Pro after this statement. User numbers will only decline from this point.
In the other side, if LG would like to only add support for their products, they would make their integration to Homey - itās way cheaper than buying whole company. For sure, they want to push Homey development in their own direction.
Just picked up a Home Assistant Green device and their Zigbee chip, and Iāll give it a go.
I really lost all respect for this company after keeping all details hidden until a community member reveals the fact.
Itās been a fun ride for a decade, this couldāve been something fantastic, but history will repeat itself, Homey will not continue the same way in the future.
Tips for a Z-Wave USB device that works in EU?
Read Aeotec 7 has issuesā¦
Iāll be slowly moving out of my 2023 Pro.
I recently I been part of two acquisitions of scale ups, before covid by I was acquired by a company worth 75 billion and last year my current company was acquired by a company worth 30 billion, these are massive companies but LG is like 6x bigger again.
The one thing I can say based on my experience is that its āa journeyā nothing will change immediately. The good news is even if there is an earn out clause - pivoting (to a new LG AI project) still takes time - and a lot more in a large corp then in a scale up. The bad news is even after massive acquisitions I have never seen a ātapā of money just turned on. Learning to work in a publicly listed company is a skillset in itself.
So chill, there is no rush, odds are the industry will have finally made Thread useful before we see any real impact (positive or otherwise) from this merger.
What do you mean by this? They sent it out in their newsletter, there was press releases from both companies and they posted a message in here at 8:01am (so probably first thing of the workday) Not sure what hidden details you are referring to, because Iām fairly certain that no community member knows more then what was said in any of the official statementsā¦
I donāt have a single email regarding them being purchased by LG. The official statement on this community came after I read about it on other media.
Considering how much of my home that is controlled by this, and the obvious changes that will happen when LG wants to, I think itās very strange that there is absolutely no warning of whatās going to happen.
They sent at least the newsletter and a separate email to all developers. If you are a normal users and didnāt opt-in into email communication, they are probably not even allowed to send you messages for anything which is not account related.
Also just a reminder South Korea is 7h ahead of the Netherlands, which means that LG released their press statement around the start of their workday. So just by this tech media was reporting on this before anyone at Athom was probably even awake. Could it have been better timed? Maybe, but this is how international business works.
LG just wants this to have their own āSmartHubā. Paying a few millions is merely pocket money, and they canāt care less if it were to fail in the near future, as long as they can use the IP to create their own product, without worrying about what will happen to the existing customers.
Just think about SmartThings, Neeo, Nest etc.
Theyāll do whatever they want.
Homey will just be there to offer a similar ecosystem as competitors, nothing more.
If they were really only interested in Homey OS, it couldāve been licensed.
Iām really disappointed in this decision. Im moving to open source so I know I always will have alternatives in the future.
Realistically it will quickly lose support from devs in the community, as they will in a close future have to sign NDAās etc. If so - they need to be paid for their effort, Iām guessing very few will invest their private time for this in the future.
A lot of assumptions your making here.
No one knows exactly what was agreed upon with LG.
There are still community developers in SmartThings since it is owned by Samsung.
So it could be possible, who knowsā¦
I do, however, share the concerns because LG could have a different agenda then Athom does, for the long run.
Absolutely, just my assumptions and personal opinion.
But from experience, I unfortunately donāt see LG wanting to keep Homey as is for the future.
Letās wait and find out
A well-written Dutch article/interview was published today, presenting the story accurately. Although itās in Dutch, Google Translate might be able to help you out
Just giving my 2 cents since itās all I can do:
I no longer have any trust that Athom cares for the community. If they cared, they would have let us know about this deal way in advance. Itās not like talks with LG started 2 days ago.
Itās even more sour right after the whole 10 years of Homey celebration and livestream where none of this was mentioned even though a lot of topics got covered there that were much less important.
I get thereās NDA stuff, and nothing was sure, but you could at least let us know you were in talks with LG or at least thinking of selling the company.
I have already stopped my backup subscription and wonāt be buying the 2023 Homey Pro (I have the 2019 Homey Pro at the moment). I almost bought it last week but chose to wait till Christmas instead, but no more.
Iām in favor of removing your apps from the homey store if you as a developer feel uncomfortable giving LG a free platform while making the owners of Athom rich and never getting a single cent for your efforts.
People created apps thinking Athom was a smaller company that had their back, but that trust has been breached.
I get this ultimately hurts the end user, but Iām not selfish. Cause if it hurts the end user, it also hurts LG and Athom - they need these apps to survive. Removing your app is in my opinion a good way to send a signal to both companies. Vote with your wallet etc.
And yes, Athom - I do believe youāll release the features you have promised like the dashboard. However, you arenāt talking about long term changes - because you know you canāt.
Things will change - LG owns 80% and wants to own 100% in 2 years. LG has also said they want to use Homey user data to better understand their customers.
Every time a merger / buyout told customers that nothing will change it very much has changed for the worse. Just not within the first 2 years.
Itās a damn shame. I was a big supporter of Homey and told my friends to get one as well. Itās by far the most user friendly smart home product out there. It just works, advanced flows are amazing and the UX of everything beats Home Assistant. It also helps that brands like Fibaro natively support Homey so you donāt need to use their hub.
But- Iām changing to Home Assistant. Itāll be worse, I will miss Homey, but Iām not stupid. I know what will ultimately be Homeys faith.
It was fun while it lasted. See you on the flip side.
It will take time to move everything to HA, but in the end youāll end up with a platform thatās more performant, more stable, more customisable, and supports more devices.
Be careful there, now you sound like Emile
I have done the move, eventhough iām homey gratefull for introducing met to home automation, i have moved to HA, and to be honest, i have a lot more of possibilities (migraged 250 flows in a weekend, and the wife did not complainā¦) , and we are now almost cloud free (some stupid purchases are the reason for this) and most and foremost, nobody nagging about payments, i have worked all my live on open source software, and never ever whined about payment, it is all about sharing and caringā¦
Not just the long run, they already have different agendas from day one. This is still on Homeyās website and will obviously not age well under LGās ownership:
Thanks but this is just proving my point, i would have found it myself (do appreciate it though) because i know my ways around the internet. But Homey works for people that donāt and thatās why i think HA is way harder for many people.
Anyways, i have some spare time now so iām gonna tinker with Node-red a bit now ;D
When I am looking at the āabout usā pages on this site, it sounds as quite a marketing site.
So perhaps not the most critical journalistsā¦