loxone open-source. Advantage for solving bugs ?

[Gast]

I'm sorry for my english message in the German part of the forum, but I'm sure that this part is visited more than the English part
My message to Loxone regarding the bug of 1/1/2016. Would they consider ope-sourcing the software I we keep asking long enough ??



Dear Loxone,
The bug that affected many miniservers on the 1th of january is regrettable, but as a miniserver is a complex piece of engineering it probably won't be the last one. The fact that your engineers found the problem and proposed a workaround in 24h is very good, but I am convinced there is a way to tackle this kind of support in a quicker way.

If you would open-source the software of the mini-server and the extensions for example as github projects, I am sure the community would have found a solution within hours from when the bug surfaced. Then the community would be able to help each other and you as a company could benefit from the wisdom of the crowd.

I can understand if you are reluctant to open source your software, but there are many examples of companies that succesfully open sourced their software, and still be a profitable business. After all, you are selling the hardware. Some people would choose to use the official Loxone software because there is support. Other people will choose to use a community adapted version of the software. As a gatekeeper of the gihub project you are in full control of the official branch of the software, you are the one that chooses if pull requests from the community make it to through to the official branch, and which not.

I'm not sure if my message makes a difference, but I am hoping that you seriously consider the option to open source the software, so people can improve it, fix bugs, helping each other, and helping Loxone to become an even beter platform for home automation.

My best regards,

Jeroen

[RocknRollArmy]

Depends highly on the complexity of the system I think. Honestly, I have no idea how complex the Loxone firmware might be. But I can imagine that not many people would be willing/able to work on this as it might be fairly complex. As the scope of audience is fairly limited by nature not many devs would jump on that boat. Sure there would be some that will find and probably fix bugs. But other bugs will not be found and still cause trouble.

Open sourcing does not make everything better magically. And even the broadest audience and a vast amount of users did not prevent one of the worst things ever happened to OSS.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/heartbleed-open-sources-worst-hour/

I'm fairly new to Loxone. But I think you can ask for as long as you like. They probably will not open source it.

Maybe crowdfounding and open source clone of Loxone would have more success. Open hardware, open firmware, open everything.
But well, that would need a little bit of man power as weill.

If you can move, this thread might be better located in "Small Talk und Offtopic"

[pts0]

I think a big community would help top develop great software and would be a huge win for selling hw of loxone (since loxone make money with hardware). There is a lot of examples, see homematic, openwrt, etc.
System may be complex, but probably not rocket science (you can try to do a little reverse engineering and you will see). Loxone have great products and quality of software is improving, in the past there was some "catastrophal" releases and something was learned.
Bad new is that marketing/politics of loxone is not going in direction open, is more and more closing, delivering information an know how only on selected paying partners. End user should have contact only with partners reseller, i would not be surprised when direct sell to end user would be discontinued. Loxone used to have a good forum for community, was closed.
Open source was proposed in forum, but no, they are the best programmer in the world and don't thrust community.
Is sad to say, but i don't see chances for open source version.

pts0

PS: Clone / Open source version of hw may be an alternative, but I don't know how ist with trademarks and so on

[RocknRollArmy]

System may be complex, but probably not rocket science (you can try to do a little reverse engineering and you will see).

Surely not rocket surgery, but maybe complex enough to not attract that many for spare time work to get to a "big community".

What you describe here in getting more closed is unfortunately what I read between the lines now quite a few times. Hopefully they will at least honor the enthusiastic home builders and not lock down everything in favor of partners only access.

Maybe that's something we should aim for. Not open sourcing their code but for staying open in general.

Open source was proposed in forum, but no, they are the best programmer in the world and don't thrust community. Is sad to say, but i don't see chances for open source version.

Microsoft learned as well and now they are more open source then a lot of others that claim it forever. Who would have imagined that just 3 years ago? So maybe Loxone will follow this approach someday and be a pioneer in this area. Hope should not die fast these days.