[WITHDRAWN] Community Admiration

Personally I think @Mike_Maxwell said it best. Open source and community development like this wins because there is implicit value in the human experience realized by solving problems. That value is often amplified when the same solution can be applied to others. There is community pride and admiration in finding the most effective methods of solving these problems. And there is enjoyment in enhancing those solutions. That’s why many of these folks provide us such awesome developments.

Where that enjoyment often ends is when forces outside of your control cause you to spend most of your creative energy addressing issues and challenges that you feel shouldn’t exist. I suspect the challenge of working around a errant platform that doesn’t behave the way its development paradigms insist gets old quickly. There is only so much enjoyment that you can derive from thinking of how to build a better light bulb during constant brown outs…

Thus a developer is left with the decision to let their creation fester and suffer from the ills of the platform. Sure you can make a post saying here is my code but I no longer support it due to x. However we should be able to understand when a developer frankly doesn’t want their name associated with such poor quality even when the poor quality is outside of their control. So to answer your question @nosnhojm, what pulling code does is say, “I find this output so unreliable that I don’t want to expose new users to it and be party to the frustration it would cause them”. Noone can blame @bravenel or any other developer for making such a judgement in current environment. Just my $.02

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We have no intention of “pulling”… in fact, quite the opposite. @slagle and @jody.albritton have gone “above and beyond” in helping us make the minimal changes necessary to have SmartTiles published via the submit & review process. They know the process is not optimal, and so they put in the extra elbow-grease… even if we sometimes have to be “squeaky wheels” to get it!

i.e., We hold them accountable when there are platform issues. We know that, to our users’ perspective, in all practical senses, a SmartThings problem is a SmartTiles problem (and vice versa). Of course, when a SmartThings Platform issue impacts SmartTiles more than other stuff, then we put in extra effort to emphasize the visibility issue (e.g., when SmartTiles can’t be installed because of a sudden platform issue, we know that there won’t be a hundred emails to support@smartthings.com … but we’re on the horn right away to Tim & Jody.

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This. Period. We know and it is has the full focus on our engineering teams. So maybe we should all take a break from these forums. We’ll let you know when all is well. Typed only half facetiously.

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[quote=“jstraughn, post:64, topic:45032”]
RM was submitted for review. Dev was told no it wasn’t. Dev submitted screenshots of the submission.
[/quote]I was shocked when @slagle posted it was never submitted for publication because on February 1st he posted:

That’s a perfect example of the false promises and lack of respect ST gives the developers.

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Overstated. We could not be putting higher/more focus on stability and reliability. This has been the case for months. I am hopeful the fruits of these focused efforts will start to pay off as early as next week. Further, this is not a spike to “fix the platform” but a renewed focus on the basics —the core promises of the SmartThings platform—forever. It may sound basic when looking at things from the outside but is our new mantra internally.

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Does this mean fixing the known issues of zwave network is on the priority list?

Edit. Don’t get me wrong I’m very optimistic that you will fix the stability issue.

But the fact that my whole zwave network doesn’t work, and there is no one working on it is disheartening

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Just reading between the lines here…

now we can…

Cheers!

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This is on the list. @duncan is the man here, but he is only one man. See the end of the thread. We are putting over stability and improvement ahead of this. When the house is on fire you don’t stop to repair the faulty oven - even if the oven is very important when cooking meals. :confused:

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I guess that was my concern. By no means did I mean to imply it should take precedence. I guess it’s hard for me to fathom an end to stability and improvement (since that’s a pretty open ended statement).

Isn’t that a fundamental problem, then? Lack of resources that can work in parallel on problems.

I know you’re hiring and on-boarding takes time; but that’s what consultants and contractors are for too.

I agree, Jason… If a resource shortage is a problem now … it will only get worse. Though I love Tim and Jody, I’m concerned that they are spread across far too many areas of responsibility. That’s got to cause focus problems and wastes time and brain energy on task swapping. Now extrapolate that across the entire company…

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@nosnhojm Have you ever developed something and shared it? The point is… what Bruce wrote wasn’t commerical! He was writing for his own purpose and was kind enough to share it. It does hurt users, but he doesn’t want to support it or have it be another excuse for the underlying platform issues. Most developers who are sharing their code have written it for themselves and just sharing it for the community.

If you look you at @RBoy he is promoting and doing a commerical app and he is supporting them all the time and answers questions! He is doing it commerical and continues to tirelessly support it. But @bravenel wasn’t doing that, he was sharing his code by his pure kindness. To criticize or feel entitled to his hard work is just wrong…

You are complaining about free app he has put out there! It is like getting a free lunch and complaining that you don’t like it. Just don’t use it if you don’t like it. You are using someone else hard work and complaining about it, the issue isn’t Bruce’s it is that ST platform has become so unstable that it isn’t worth his time to continue to support it. ST should be giving developers like bruce and the others as much help and recognition as possible, if you see what they did with early developers @twack and @gilbert they hired them! The developers are what make this community great, so don’t complain about the developers it is ST who is not supporting them well.

@nosnhojm I really think you should write your own app, and see the time and commitment it takes and then you can have a better idea of how much effort it takes to do these. You should be thankful for @bravenel and others and not complain really.

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I love this statement; but the keywords, unfortunately, are “as possible”.

SmartThings is pretty well aware that they have not met quite a few of @625alex and my hopes and expectations. The effort to build, maintain, enhance, and provide user support for SmartTiles, and the tremendously supportive and gracious reception by the Community generated high expectations that we’d get some extra special treatment from SmartThings. We are also aware that we probably expect stuff from SmartThings that’s just “not possible” given their constraints. Yet they’ve exceed some of our expectations too! We know to take and appreciate the good with the not-so-good.

I think we all can admit that SmartThings has, by precedent, limited expectations across the board as to what is and, apparently, is not possible. I think Bruce may have underestimated the possibilities, but some of his conclusions are “possibly” correct (or at least, understandable).

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Let’s not forget our star code slinger @tslagle13 now turned @slagle and @jodyalbritton

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And before that it was @juano2310 and @megapixel (RIP - not dead)

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None of my comments have pertained to developer commitment or expectation of support; they have been about the consideration given to how these withdrawals affect end users. I think everyone agrees that it does impact end users.

As for the various comments about “you don’t understand until you develop your own app”; hogwash. I have a BS in computer engineering, MS in electrical engineering, over a decade of experience as a systems engineer in the embedded medical device field. Just because I don’t code ST groovy doesn’t mean my opinions, or those of other non-developers, should be outright dismissed. They might be different than yours (as seems to be the case), but not invalid.

I appreciate the work and free code that developers provide to the community. I have no expectations of continued maintenance or support. I do have an expectation that developers consider end users when making decisions such as complete withdrawal of code. They might still end up at the same decision end point, but the rationale so far has seemed to solely focus on pressuring ST to make changes.

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Try 750$ for the kit plus all the extra’s I would never have bought had ST not made promises they could not keep. My system worked well prior to the V2 release. I feel like ST has betrayed their early supporters.
That is what upsets me the most,

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@nosnhojm I don’t know… it seems with all of your experience then it would be understandable why @bravenel made his decision. I don’t expect you to code groovy, but having experience supporting an open source project you may have a different perspective.

I don’t know what you expect, all of these apps by other developers might be pulled at any time. I think that people need to have that expectation coming in.

You started this thread started with wondering why developers would pack up shop and take their code. It is frustrating the recent platform woes, and i think it is surprising more people haven’t left the community and give up on ST recently.

That’s why Apache 2.0 (and other restriction free) licenses exist and why users like yourself should not have expections that code won’t be “withdrawn” (or otherwise restricted), unless it has such a license. You should be particularly aware of this, I would think.

Apache 2.0 (and other similar licenses) are extremely valuable options for developers to offer. The biggest value is for the users, firstly, however (and, in turn, this may benefit the developer with more users and voluntary / collaborative development assistance).

I bring this up as important educational information. Anyone using Community code / apps / DTHs should first consider the impact of the license that code bears.

Most users do not pay attention. Bruce’s code license conditions clearly gave him the right to unilaterally withdraw the code from distribution. No one had any right to expect more.

If you have a different expectation, then only use code with more liberal licenses. (And if you are a developer, make your license choice very carefully.)

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… So how did you enjoy the play Mrs. Lincon?

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Rule Machine was released under Apache and recently changed to a restrictive license (2-3 months ago?).

Honestly that is my hesitation about smarttiles (which I use and love) is that it can go away at anytime and there is nothing I can do about it.

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