So in the news here in the Netherlands: Homey just got sold to LG.
In local discussion fora, alot of users see this as a bad thing, and are already looking to jump ship.
If I may be so bold to sugest to @Hubitat_Staff : Run a targeted campain promoting Hubitat to Homey users.
All of LGs efforts in the "connected devices" space have been unmitigated disasters for the customers - whether they met LGs internal goals or metrics and are viewed as 'successful' internally I can't know...
I expect this to go as well as Samsung did with SmartThings. Homey has one this that SmartThings didn't have is that they are monetized via a subscription model to use the features of the device.
Unfortunately the sad reality is this is the only end game that makes any financial sense in the long run. Let's just hope it is a responsible party like Microsoft instead of the other knuckleheads in the industry. It's just math based on installed user base and scale. Fortunately for us geeks this is likely a long way away.
That's only true if you are a corporate entity that always has to be "growing" in order to satiate shareholders. Many privately owned companies survive, and even thrive, by maintaining a stable and devoted base of customers.
The key there, though, is that they usually have to stay private, carry little to no debt, and have a small group of owners that are aligned on how much "enough" size and profit is.
On the flip side, what tends to kill those kind of businesses is when the small group of owner(s) retire or die off and new management buys into the "either you're growing or dying" nonsense.
Yup... old as dirt. And eventually the owners pass on one way or the other, and the successors seek how to make money... and well... you know the rest of the story.
Now, I am thinking about whether it is worth putting so much effort and time into community apps/drivers that may become proprietary to a greedy corporation?
Thinking back, that's got to be one of the most successful "re-branding" jobs in recent history. It really did step them up out of the low-ball-junk category...there might be some areas where credit is due.
But I wonder if you did a study of their entire product portfolio if you'd reach the conclusion that they made a bigger marketing image "step up" than quality "step up". I'm kinda thinking the "quality aspect" was from just being in a boat that rose with the same quality tide industry-wide and not something they achieved as an explicit design goal.