OP here. When I created this post on February 2018, I had been in contact with Rboy and this what he had said:
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Seem to contradict each other. But then again, the "CEO" (would have been better if they stated who they reached out to) at that time isn't the same "CEO" that is at Hubitat now. Maybe they need to reach out again?
Or better yet, reach out to a human - not a title - and engage with Bruce directly. Ball still seems clearly in RBoy's court.
But whatever. Any RBoy app subscribing HE user with development skills theoretically would have ported the RBoy apps they wanted to use over to HE for personal use a long time ago anyway. I realize that doesn't help the masses, though, and more options on HE is a good thing.
I've looked at RBoy's code in great detail in the past. While there are definitely some clever things in there, and it is a nice/polished offering, there isn't anything they do in there that can't be done outside of their paid apps. Out if the apps I looked at (I didn't look at them all) I don't see the huge need/desire to have then on HE. But, again, more choice is good in general I guess.
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Agree I am just trying to provide details I know as the OP, almost 2 years later 
. In February 2018 locks didn’t work well on HE and no lock code management app existed. HE has come a long way since then and I really don’t have a need for the Rboy apps any longer for my simple cases.
FWIW This unfortunately violates Rboy’s license.
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Yup, it sure does. But as with all licensing agreements the license holder would have to demonstrate that there are actual damages before they could pursue legal action.
Good luck with that if an individual that paid for the apps is using them for personal use and not sharing or distributing the code to anyone else.
For the record, I am currently running no RBoy apps on my hubs - so I'm not worried about it personally.
But for those that want/need the RBoy apps on HE, let's hope RBoy reaches out to Bruce and that they can work out an arrangement.
If not, then there isn't much to discuss/argue about really.
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I've have been speaking with rboy he says he is more than willing to bring his code over to hubitat. Could someone please reach out to him?
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He's free to bring them over, and could have done so at any point since we launched Hubitat. But, he's not free to charge for them per the TOS. Since he's "more than willing", then surely it's time for him to offer his apps for free like everyone else does, e.g. Package Manager, Hub Connect, about 100 drivers, etc., etc.
LoL just wow. Ive never known anyone who had a business willing to offer their product for free. I had not realized that hubitat would not be willing to come to an understanding with him. I would have saved some time.
I won't bring it up again.
I think the implication is that RBoy and Hubitat would have some type of agreement, whether monetary or otherwise. Correct me if I am wrong, but I am reading that statement above as Hubitat doesn't want people charging money, without the blessing of Hubitat. And maybe a cut of the profit???
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Hey my thoughts exactly. This was the line of thought I was going getting after as well. I think it'd be more than appropriate for hubitat to get a piece of the action.
However negotiations have to happen to get there. Which is why I've been trying hard to get everyone to talk to eachother.
I'm apparently missing some obvious hurdle. Given @bravenel response to me i give up.
Isn’t that RBoy’s deleted post immediately above yours? Perhaps he deleted it and then directly reached out to the concerned party at Hubitat?
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It's been a year but I think the underlying issue is unchanged.
If they work something out behind the scenes, maybe we'll see RBoy apps on Hubitat.
I doubt they want to have much of a public discussion about it here though. If I were staff, I wouldn't. 
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Beat me to it.
Yep, that isn't pubic forum information.
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I just moved over from SmartThings I am a bit confused I used a number of RoyBoy apps on SmartThings and liked them found them useful.
Why would Hubitat try and stop a developer from making money on their work?? What does it take for Hubitat to invite a developer to work on their environment??? Why is it ok for Sharptools to charge $30 a year but RoyBoy can’t charge $39 bucks for a lifetime license for 32 drivers and 22 apps? I am not a programmer and am willing to pay for a persons time if it gets the job done better than anything else does. If this is supposed to be a community supported device then how is it wrong to support the community??? This is something that should be openly discussed by the community because it will be the community that will makes this product thrive !!
Without being any of the parties involved, I would speculate that Sharptools and Hubitat came to some kind of agreement, likely monetary compensation of some type. Who knows what they agreed to.
Whereas Rboy for whatever reason can not or did not come to an agreement with Hubitat for reasons unknown. And that is not up to the community to negotiate those terms. I don't think it is some evil Hubitat plan to exclude Rboy. It is simply the way that Hubitat has set up their terms of service.
And many people on here do donate via Paypal or otherwise to developers. You are certainly free to do that. They did spend lots of time and effort for these community based apps. Nobody is stopping that.
I did not come from Smartthings so maybe I am missing something, but by a cursory glance, nearly or everything he offers is on Hubitat in one form or another. I don't really see the need for his apps, but again maybe I am missing something.
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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
I paid rboy for lifetime use of the apps. It was worth it to me, even though other alternatives existed -the benefit i got from rboy outweighed the alternative. It is very nice to have the freedom to be able to make that choice.
I emailed the rboy app developer asking if they could port to Hubitat yesterday. Via email she (the email was signed by Maddie which i presume is a female) said that they can not make commercial apps available on the hubitat platform without approval by hubitat due to how they license the software. According to rboy, hubitat does not have any signaled any interest in letting them sell their commercial apps on the platform.
I would like to continue to use the apps i own on hubitat, i would even consider buying them again if need be. I can't do that because the license I quoted prohibits anyone from selling any software that runs on the platform.
so, can someone please enlighten me why it is in hubitats or their users best interest to prohibit freedom of choice on the platform? Freedom is the absence of coercion. This license agreement is explicitly limiting freedom.
If this is rooted in commercial terms, eg. hubitat wants a cut of the cake when apps are sold on the platform then at least do what most platform houses do, create an ISV license program and license the commercial use of the API's maybe together with a bit of developer support.
I'd love to hear what the strategy is from a company representative and why it is my best interest not to have freedom of choice on this platform? There clearly is a few more than just me who thinks this is a topic that deserves to be revisited.
I think that this has been hashed over many times. But use as an example McDonalds. They sell hamburgers. But you as ParB want to sell french fries to McDonalds customers by advertising "ParB fries tastes great with McDonalds hamburgers".
McDonalds says "wait a minute, you can't do that, you are using our name, our reputation, and going against our legal rights. But if you pay us $1 for every $10 in sales, we will allow you to sell fries".
And ParB says, "No, I want to just sell fries without paying you". Or there is some other ridiculous demand from ParB, like McDonalds must pay ParB $100 every time a ParB fry is consumed.
Should McDonalds just let ParB sell fries? Shouldn't McDonalds defend their name and ability to make profits?
I have said it before, and I will say it again, if Rboy wants to be on Hubitat, I think he needs to negotiate this right like apparently Sharptools did. I think Hubitat is open to this concept, but apparently neither side can come to an agreement here. I do think there is something in place (your ISV license, or whatever that may be) as Hubitat are (apparently) doing something like this with Sharptools.
Nobody but Hubitat and Rboy can make this happen. We can do nothing but speculate about how these two parties have tried to negotiate, or IF they even did so. Rboy "wanting" to have his apps here does not equate to him actually sitting down with Hubitat and being serious about doing so.
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I think that this has been hashed over many times. But use as an example McDonalds. They sell hamburgers. But you as ParB want to sell french fries to McDonalds customers by advertising "ParB fries tastes great with McDonalds hamburgers".
McDonalds says "wait a minute, you can't do that, you are using our name, our reputation, and going against our legal rights. But if you pay us $1 for every $10 in sales, we will allow you to sell fries".
And ParB says, "No, I want to just sell fries without paying you". Or there is some other ridiculous demand from ParB, like McDonalds must pay ParB $100 every time a ParB fry is consumed.
Should McDonalds just let ParB sell fries? Shouldn't McDonalds defend their name and ability to make profits?
McDonalds do not have any means to prevent the scenario you outlined. This is falling under trademark law, which allows you to reference other trademarks in advertising.
It is perfectly acceptable and within the bounds of the law to use another's trademark in advertising, provided certain standards are met. The advertisement must be truthful and the use of another's trademark must not give a false impression of connection, approval or sponsorship by the owner of the other mark.
Consider this, under your interpretation of trademark law the Pepsi challenge could never have been run as a marketing campaign since it refers in advertising to a direct competitors brand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghMYzo0rgrw
I think this scenario is more relevant.
A manufacturer of footballs wants Nike to pay a fee to allow their shoes kick their particular brand of football despite the interface (eg. the football) is standardized across several other vendors of footballs. They write the license agreement of the football in such a way that Nike is prohibited from allowing their end-users from using their shoes and that football in a combination unless Nike pays fees to the football manufacturer. A bit absurd isn't it?
I think these agreements doesn't hold up in court. But since we are talking micro companies here the cost-benefit of getting this resolved in court is slim to none. Either way the real looser is the consumer whose freedom of choice has been limited.
Final point, why a Terms of Service agreement and not a regular license agreement? was this originally going to be using a different business model than selling hardware boxes?
It was always a hardware box with a license to use the home automation platform software in it, which isn’t fully open-source, and the license isn’t fully unrestricted (in other words, there are terms on how it can be used).
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I'm another person that recently moved from SmartThings to Hubitat and used RBoys apps....and was disheartened to find out that they weren't available.
While I understand the standard TOS is that developers are not allowed to charge for apps it leads me to believe there is a Non-Standard TOS that allows it....otherwise how could Sharptools charge for their service. Also, the package manager has a donation request in the app itself.
I find little difference between asking for donations or charging for the app since the net result is the same....the developer is compensated for their time. While many developers develop apps as a hobby, there are some that develop apps for the livelihood.
I would hope that with the amount of interest that this topic seems to have, that the leadership at Hubitat would take the lead and try to work something out......RBoy appears to have (at least by the accounts above and the emails I've had with them) an interest in providing apps on the HE platform.
Anyway, just my two cents.
