Just this week alone 3 projects are now cancelled due to platform changes. Some of the largest contributors are now pulling their custom apps and it worries me that this is becoming a trend and that things are going to become crap and nobody is going to create apps because they are constantly making backend changes. I’m not trying to rant or create a post that gets hundreds of reply’s of people complaining about the platform. I really do love ST and I have invested tons of money and more hours trying to learn how to develop and customize my own apps. It’s just rough when you want to sit back and enjoy something and watch your stuff work as it should, only to have your wife ask why is that light on in the boys room at 10:30pm.
I realize that ST has to make a lot of backend changes to make things more secure and lay the groundwork for ST2.0. but they need to remember that the people that helped make them successful need there technology work. If they keep making changes that are breaking apps that filled the void of unofficially approved devices you going to alienate your current user base. I’m not sure where to go from here but i feel there needs to be some sort of heads up of what changes are coming. Honestly I could be mad for nothing and these developers are pulling there apps at the request of ST in-order to bring them into the fold officially
These projects have NOT been cancelled due to platform changes. @Geko cancelled his to make a point. We communicated reasons why we weren’t able to publish his submissions months ago and he is acting like it is new information. There have only been two people “pull their apps”. They are pulling them because they either don’t have time to support them or want to make money on them in the near or distant future. Anything else that is said is theater,
We have made NO CHANGES to close the system off or limit what people can do. Quite to the contrary we just launched a beta program for Github integration that will facilitate MUCH MORE innovation and sharing amongst developers. We are rolling out rich controls that utilize HTML and CSS to allow much more creativity in the types of solutions (not just SmartApps) that can be created. There are weekly improvements to the IDE.
The future of the platform in not in doubt. SmartThings just needs to create better tools and give more powerful options to 3rd party developers. We are getting there. The size of the Developer Platform Team I am a part of is now nearly the size that our entire company was in May of last year. Our mission is to advocate for the 3rd party developers and help them be the engine of innovation that only they can be.
Yeah, don’t worry about a single developer rage quitting.
geko aka statusbits
20
I believe some clarification is in order. First, to be presice, Pollster was rejected on June 17th, not “months ago” as you stated. Considering that SmartThings is just a hobby for me and not a paying job, I do have other priorities in life and I am under no obligation to respond within specific timeframe. However, the reasons for rejection were made perfectly clear and also reiterated in some discussions on the forum (in fact, the same reasons why SmartTiles by @625alex was termed “unpublishable”).
Second, your attempt to “explain” my actions by desire “to make money” is quite lame and patently false. All projects that I cancelled today were written for my personal use and shared with the community under GPL license absolutely free, without asking for “donation” or reward of any kind.
Third, it is true that I can no longer support these projects, but not because the lack of time, but because they have become “unsupportable” due to recently introduced bugs in SmartThings platform. There are at least three critical bugs that were introduced in the last two month thar render VLC Thing and to lesser degree Radio Thermostat device handlers practically useless.
I understand that you have other priorities and a bigger fish to fry with hub V2 and other more exciting projects. And that’s fine with me. I just have to accept reality and stop worrying about things outside of my control. Closing the projects that either don’t work as intended or can be used as an excuse for poor platform performance is not a “theater”, but a right thing to do.
Sorry for the long post.
P.S. BTW, this is not the first time I’m canceling SmartThings projects, so I see no reason for the drama. I did cancel the X10 Bridge and the GE remote control projects in the past, although they were much lower key and didn’t have the same impact.
fine, how about theatrical quit? Either way i’ve looked @ his code there are simple ways to make his apps work, even with the platform limitations. I added 1 line of code to pollster when the SSDS issues started and pollster has been rock solid ever since. I understand not wanting to publish subpar code, but posting that your killing your projects, deleting your code and that no one can reuse his code is all a bit… theatrical.
OK. I’ll just get the heck out of the way.
Do yourself a favor and read my post above before jumping to conclusions and exposing yourself. Pollster was cancelled not because it didn’t work, but because it was identified as a root case of poor system performance, whether imaginary or not. And WRT to device handlers, there’s no “one line fix”, so let’s just leave it at that.
Wow. I knew when I pressed send I was making a bad decision. I was merely voicing frustration over some of the the issues I was having with some of my installed SmartApps suddenly not working and my wife yelling at me. I apologize for stirring the pot. Since I clearly was not aware of all of the facts. I will think twice before I ‘pwi’ (post while irritated) in the future.
That is pretty good advice for anyone 
I should take it more often. I have been quite stressed lately and my frustration with issues like the one you raised is that it is based mostly on misunderstandings. People misconstrue my words as attacks, misconstrue posts as condemnations, and generally do not understand the larger picture. That last one is on us (SmartThings) in being unable to provide enough transparency for clear understanding, but just enough to get people thinking of the future. If I had my way I think we would swing to near-full transparency (aka anti-Apple) but as it stands I think a hybrid is probably best. Roadmaps and backlogs should be shared but without timelines.
I agree with Ben on this one and hope we can avoid this kind of problem in the future. Peace…
Hey @geko, at least they rejected your app. I have a device type from back in January that still hasn’t even been looked at. The irony is that the device type is a hack to work around problems… and that the hack is STILL NEEDED to work around the problems that were never fixed by ST.