Third Party Developers like Rboy

I have really enjoyed Rboys lock SmartApp and Device Handler in SmartThings. It’s made my life very easy with many people coming and going in my household. Is Hubitat open to third party developers selling apps and drivers? I’d love to see Rboy develop apps for Hubitat as well.

Thanks!

@bravenel, @patrick, @mike.maxwell do you plan to allow third party developers like Rboy or even ActionTiles to create drivers and apps?

Awesome thank you for the clarification. I will reach out to Rboy to see if he would be interested in porting over some of his apps and drivers.

More the merrier. I’ve also already sent an email to RBoy.

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This would be a huge help, Using RBoy’s handlers and apps with smartthings… Having this be used with Hubitat would be great. I assume I can’ t just port them over? or can I ?

Technically you can port them over, however you can’t redistribute them. So don’t post any code.

What did he/they say?

Modifying his code is against his licensing policy:

End User License Restrictions
Copyright (c) RBoy Apps. Each subscription provides the user a license to install the code on a single SmartThings hub. The code cannot be modified, distributed or reused in any form or manner. Please note: Enabling ST integration with GitHub may lead to a violation of the license due to publishing of the code on a public site.

I had gotten in touch with him a month ago and his response was:

No response from them as yet unfortunately - just been very tied up with new product releases here on ST

Apparently he hasn’t gotten a response from the Hubitat staff.

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Here's another vote for getting Rboy involved over here. There's a lot of wasted time happening without his efforts toward the Hubitat hub.

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I'd gladly pay for RBoy's z-wave smart lock app/driver if it would make my Schlage BE469 work reliably with Hubitat. I'm getting increasingly frustrated with how flaky it behaves.

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I’m also looking to move to Hubitat if I can get rboy apps. I was told that Hubitat policy doesn’t allow for code to be sold for use with the Hubitat hub. Is that true?

I was told that santa claus and the tooth fairy are real :slight_smile:.

Always best to verify information like that for oneself. In the case of Hubitat policy, that's easy to do by reading the terms of service. Section four states (emphasis added):

  1. Customer Intellectual Property. Customer shall be permitted to create its own derivative software from the Software for its own personal use (the “Customer Software”). “Customer Software” means any and all software that the Customer writes, designs and develops to supplement Customer’s use of the Software that does not include the Software. Hubitat does not claim any ownership over Customer Software. The foregoing notwithstanding, the Customer acknowledges that the Customer may not assign, sublease, distribute, share or otherwise make the Customer Software available to third parties for commercial purposes; provided, however, that Customer may distribute and share Customer Software for non-commercial purposes for no compensation. Hubitat shall have no backup, improvement, maintenance, support or other obligations whatsoever with respect to the Customer Software, and Hubitat shall not be responsible for Customer’s ongoing ability to use any Customer Software upon the termination of this Agreement.

I’m not a lawyer but I do not think that provision is even remotely enforceable. That section opens up taking about customer software in the context of a derivative work of Hubitat’s software. Since we do not have access to any of the Hubitat source code it is impossible to create a derivative work.

Further, I do not believe that creating apps and drivers that follow their required structure also can be considered a derivative work since they too are considered derivative works from the SmartThings apps & drivers that were originally published under the Apache 2.0 license.

In my opinion, anyone who wishes to create and sell commercial apps on this platform are able to do so without breaching the Hubitat terms of service. The only thing to be aware of is promotion of such commercial apps here in the community world likely not be allowed.

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I'm not a lawyer either, but I understood "customer software" to mean the apps and drivers that community members create. Since generic statements like

are generally impossible to attribute or verify/refute, my opinion is that any further discussion is moot without referencing the specific clause(s) of the platform terms of service that seem to be relevant.

I would welcome any comment from Hubitat staff, or someone more knowledgeable about contract law than me (which is setting the bar pretty low :laughing:) to help clarify further.

Even should Hubitat staff clarify that (in their opinion) you cannot sell apps.. Putting something into a contract doesn’t automatically make it enforceable. This is especially true since their driver/app model is based on SmartThings and all of that code was released under the Apache 2.0 license.

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Certainly, specific contract provisions can be held unenforceable by a court (or arbitrator, since another paragraph of the Hubitat TOS states that we all agree to binding arbitration and give up rights to a jury trial in the event of any dispute).

Does the apache 2.0 license address whether developers that create derivative works can charge customers for access to their code? I'm not a developer either, so I'm just here to learn more :slight_smile:.

It sure does...

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that's a cool website, if only it translated the hubitat TOS from legalese to plain english :rofl:.

We haven't heard from Rboy about him having any interest in this, and his existing license to his apps would disallow this.

Indeed, you are not a lawyer and you are completely wrong in suggesting that the TOS is not enforceable. We do not allow the publication of apps and drivers for sale by third parties under the standard TOS. Anyone who wants to engage in selling apps and drivers would have to obtain an agreement with us to do so. This is possible, but someone like Rboy would have to talk to us about it and work out the terms.

I have talked to Rboy and he has told me he has no interest in supporting Hubitat in the future. That's a shame but it is what it is. Same goes for ActionTiles.