I wanted to remind people about this drama from the creator of HA, Frenck toward Nix maintainers packaging Home-Assistant in nixpkgs.

If he behaves in this immature, dictatorial way, it is not a stretch to think that he will eventually close his source code and/or cash in on the popularity of his open source software like the Pi Foundation and OpenAI did to differing degrees.

How it started.

TLDR; Frenck is convinced that he has the right to unilaterally mandate how people package his free, open source software and, in my opinion, will most likely behave with similar lack of integrity/lack of transparency with regards to profiteering off of his work eventually. We should fork the project ASAP to protect it from the power-hungry Luddite in charge (that reminds me of Spez).

  • Panron@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Probably an unpopular opinion, but:

    If users experiencing issues with the ambee library in this package, they will knock on my door. And I’m not willing to support that or accept that burden. Especially as I don’t see a good repacking reason in this case.

    As a developer, this seems like a reasonable argument to me.

    Also, I see from a comment you made recently that you seem to be involved with NixOS:

    There’s always Nix but the dev behind HA has a personal vendetta against Nix people building his software (for some ridiculously stupid reason…he doesn’t understand the tech!). We packaged home assistant in nixpkgs anyway because we don’t negotiate with terrorists.

    Calling him a terrorist is rather melodramatic. And I think further enforces his point, that your actions are creating unnecessary problems for others, and you simply don’t care.

    Edit:

    Did Frenck come off as a bit of an asshole? Yes. But in my opinion, so did all of the NixOS people. Kind of a bad situation all around.

    • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Agreed. If an operating system I don’t support for my software was redirecting its users with issues to my front door I’d cut them off too if they didn’t want to help. Two way street friends. If they wanted to vilify me over it I’d happily terminate communication with them.