Maybe. Hopefully. Not certainly.
I am not a lawyer, but I strongly suggest that you read the Hubitat Terms of Service very, very carefully and make your own decision.
My own understanding of that document includes:
- Hubitat (the corportation, or it's corporate heir, if sold) owns the software (firmware) running on your hub, and may revoke the right for you to run that firmware. I do not know whether "revoke" is used in a strictly legal sense or if they have a technical mechanism to disable the firmware.
- You don't have the right to transfer that firmware to anyone -- ie., you can't sell a used Hubitat hardware with the Hubitat firmware installed or even give it to someone to encourage them to develop an app or driver for the community. Not a very open or developer-friendly attitude.
- The terms under "4. Customer Intellectual Property" seem to prohibit individuals from making their own software available to 3rd parties for commercial use. I am not a lawyer, but it's unclear to me what constitutes a derivative work, given that Hubitat's software is closed-source. Do they mean customer-written apps & drivers that rely on (but do not distribute) Hubitat libraries & APIs? Given that Hubitat's own product is fundamentally based on their use of open-source software (Linux) for commercial use (completely allowed by licenses covering the underlying OS and drivers), this is a very unfriendly attitude toward community developers.
- Clause 5 indicates that Hubitat (the corporation) can "terminate or suspend" a customer's use of the Hubitat Platform (firmware). I don't know whether that is in a strictly legal sense, or if there are undocumented methods for Hubitat (the corporation) to shutdown hubs. Note that Hubitat closed a thread on this without providing clarification about their terms and conditions.
I really do welcome corrections to my reading of these terms, particularly since I'm not a lawyer. If the comments are from HE staff, it should be made clear whether their statements are ammendments or corrections to the terms of service, or merely opinion.
