Services / Platforms such as SmartThings, IFTTT, Twitter, etc., etc., etc., see tremendous business value in integrating with each other. Twitter is relevant because they are famous for making a major change to their API and 3rd Party Developer policies a few years ago. It was horrendous, but Twitter stuck with it.
They don’t do it for altruistic reasons. Corporations have only one purpose: Value for the shareholders (and often distracted by executives and board members seeking personal gain). Everyone else is pulling in their own personal directions … some very well-meaning and customer focused, and others not.
The OAuth change on Monday was influenced by many factors … primarily to get UK up and running with the official integrations. There are indications that the side-effects some of us experienced were actually intentional. Whether or not the side-effects were reasonable, what was unreasonable is that we were given no heads-up communication regarding the change. We spent quite a few hours confirming the problem and escalating for resolution. What a waste of our – unpaid – time.
The Community has many Developers. SmartThings has a “Developer Advocacy Team” that is supposed to be focused on providing us the best possible experience and they, indeed, acted swiftly to resolve the problem. But they are aware of the higher standard that we want to be able to expect from them. It is up to SmartThings’s upper management and Samsung to decide how committed they are to the concept of “open”; the concept is easy, actually, the devil is in the daily, monthly, and yearly details. Every undisclosed plan and subtle decision adds up to uncertainty, and uncertainty makes the platform less attractive to integrate with – in both directions.