I’m newish to ST and this community, but I’ve been here long enough to observe the some of the recent platform issues and developer ‘revolt’. I find it sad that this community has lately been consumed with such a negative outlook and resorted to withdrawing applications. I’m not a developer, nor have I been with ST long enough to have endured the stability issues that many have faced, but this community has become a bit toxic.
I can understand pulling support temporarily while the ST issues are fixed, but how does packing up shop and taking your code with you achieve anything except hurting us users?
Yup this used to be be an exciting place. People expect a lot for $100 when it comes to electronics. I get upset too but I don’t see any better options and I can only imagine how the ST team must feel.
I would be all for every community developer withdrawing support/code if it put enough pressure on ST to fix some of their basic issues. Because I have a hard time not seeing them come back to this platform if/when they do get fixed.
I think the OP is right…by pulling their code they only hurt the users that worshiped them. Specific programs won’t make or break smart things – there will always be someone to create more code…someone that will work for groupie followers. This is an easy way out of the “free support” they volunteered to do…that just got to be overwhelming. That’s ok…but making excuses and pointing fingers…that’s just too much bad karma. Some have left their code on the system…most has the Apache license, that’s the right way to do it. They were smart, they created something good, but everything is replaced sooner or later…whether it be code or people. It’s how you choose to resign that most folks will remember.
Developers will do what they will do. Some people have put so much hard work into their apps, hell some of them make the platform useful period so I can see them looking for some means of marketing their app in a healthy ecosystem.
I’ve made some easy peasy one off apps that help me but I would never expect to get paid for them but if I put the amount of work that some people have… I get it… I want the negativity to stop too, it’s a sticky situation driven by unseen deamons in the servers and maybe in some of the decision making.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to here. I’ve written fair amount of apps for SmartThings and they’re all still on Github, although at some point I was also so fed up with ST inability to maintain basic platform stability that I took my repo down. So I know first hand how Bruce feels. You really need to be a developer to understand that.
Sorry Geko, it wasn’t direct at you, I just hit reply to the last user instead of to the thread. Please forgive me. I do understand the emotions…but frankly I’ve been able to work around every roadblock I’ve encountered. My stuff works…so I can’t truly empathize with those who have not found a path around those obstacles.
I see it from both sides, put yourself in Bruce’s shoes. How unappreciated would you feel if support continually blamed your app for the problems. They couldn’t publish it in 5 months(and I think others have waited longer!) ? That isn’t ample time? I certainly don’t think any less of him.
Now now…Bruce is a good guy, but he’s human like the rest of us, and humble enough to admit it. Go back through discussions a bit and you’ll find how grateful he was about 3 weeks ago that someone from smartthings helped him find a problem in his code, that he had blamed on them.
Yes, I have to use state variables – but I don’t use them massively like RM does. If I did, I would create a way to backup those state variables using other means, putting them to a web database or something. There’s no way in groovy to back them up without using state itself.
I don’t think it’s fair to expect Bruce (or anyone) to build/host some sort of web database to work around the platform’s problems for all of the RM users to use free of charge to avoid your “bad karma”.
I think using the “excuse” that the platform doesn’t function as desired/documented/etc. is perfectly valid.
It’s not fair that I have to back up my code locally, in case smarthings or github is hacked. But I do it because I don’t want to loose things or re-create work. Its the same with anything…“you shouldn’t have to” is never an excuse for not taking precautions to protect folks data.
I didn’t even know this was about Bruce’s apps. Quite frankly it’s the only app keeping my house running, I really do understand his frustration and that of the others as they’re who’s making ST useful.
Nobody here wants to offend any true developers, we just want people and things to be happy.
I truly hope I’m not understanding you correctly, but your posts read as though you think the authors of the [WITHDRAWN] SmartApps should have been building/hosting/maintaining some sort of external replacement for each piece of the ST ecosystem that’s broken.
That’s ludicrous.
…and I say that as a guy who built an iron lung for the old scheduler.
No…btk. I just posted what I would do. I don’t expect anything from anyone…I can work around my own problems. But you’ll never find me pointing the finger at the Smartthings folks. They are very helpful, they tell you whats going on, and I can’t blame them if I fail to read a message they posted…or if something breaks. I can adapt. BTW nice iron lung for the scheduler. Did you see my analog clock/magnet on hand/door sensor I use as a backup poll-er? 99.9999% reliable!
Did you see my analog clock/magnet on hand/door sensor I use as a backup poll-er? 99.9999% reliable!