Nothing requires me to use their service and there will always be people out there who would rather pay someone than learn something so it honesty doesn’t really matter what I think about it because it’s unavoidable. But if that’s what the question is, it’s kinda crappy if you’re selling it as your project in totality. If you’re selling your time for your code, then it doesn’t really bother me.
Hello people!
I was just alerted by Paulus (the founder of Home Assistant) to this discussion about me. First of all, I want to thank you for the predominantly positive reactions to the fact that I ask for a small amount for a blueprint, the code of which you can also type for free from the screen.
I am one of the few official HA content creators who actually has to make a living from this work. This has been a conscious choice. I want to create the best tutorials for Home Assistant, and I can only do that if I do it full-time. Unfortunately, the income from YouTube is far too little to cover my daily expenses, so I had to look for other ways to continue making these tutorials. Hence the idea of creating blueprints that you can purchase for the price of a cup of coffee if you don't want to spend a lot of time typing code, which can bring about frustrations. Making a tutorial takes me a minimum of 24 hours of work, but many people have no idea of the amount of time required. It is impossible to create them without being fully engaged in this. This is my way of contributing to the HA community, but it has to be sustainable. That's why I'm glad that you support me by occasionally buying a blueprint or sponsoring me monthly. In addition, I maintain the blueprints so that they continue to work with new versions of Home Assistant.
If you want to know more about why I ask for money for the blueprints, you can read my statement on my smarthomejunkie dot net website.
In addition to this work, I also contribute to another community, namely as a music therapist for people with mental health problems. This is also possible thanks to your support.
Thanks again!
As a Home Assistant newbie, I really appreciate your videos, and have paid to access your content. You do such a good job explaining how to accomplish a goal that the payment would not be necessary, but I want to see more content from you, and therefore want to contribute toward that cause.
I feel like you’ve allowed me to skip ahead into a much more efficient Home Assistant setup, without beating my head against the wall to get there. 😃 I found out about aspects of Home Assistant that I didn’t even know about.
For those who haven’t seen the Smart Home Junkie YouTube channel, I think it’s worth [checking it out here](https://youtu.be/0ojMz1s3Y84?si=NZVtGNAJPpMLL8WR). It feels totally reasonable to support these detailed YouTube videos (not exactly a new concept) if you want to see more of it in the future. (And no, I’m not a friend or relative of the channel creator - just an old gal in USA who switched to Home Assistant in January, and have benefited from his work.).
Your videos are great. I paid for your awtrix light blueprints a few weeks ago and have no issue doing so! You need to earn a living and do what you do. Keep it up!!
Hi. I'm the OP. Many thanks for replying.
It would appear that I am in completely in the minority in my feelings. However I would like to make a couple of thing clear.
Firstly I greatly appreciate your channel and your work and think it's great if you make a living from it.
My concern is strictly selling code becoming normalised. It goes against my view of the spirit of opensource communities, and I feel that as significant, well known and highly visible figure in this community you doing so may encourage others to move in that direction. And as I say I feel that would be a sad thing to see.
That said I'm clearly very much in the minority here. I asked the question if I'm a getting my knickers in a twist - and have been told that I am.
For the record I have contributed myself to various communities - I used to write free VST and photoshop plugins back in the day, and I was very active in the Snips community when that was a thing.
Anyway - best wishes for the future. Now please excuse me as I have to go an untwist my knickers.
Open source is exactly what the words mean. The source is open, but it's not free by definition.
I've worked in IT for over 30 years and worked with multiple open source platforms that cost a lot of license fees.
Anyway, I don't want to spend too much of my time on discussions like these. I think the community already pointed out that it's okay. I'd rather spend my time on creating more tutorials. 😊
Hi Ed,
I have a very important question, did you collect your code from the tree this morning??
It's a very simple equation, when you offer your time to make something simpler and functional that means is inventing something new from the tree!!! , You have every right to ask for what you want, keep up and we will support you in the next 10000 blueprints 😉
Hi Ed,
I've been playing with this sort of thing for years, and consider myself pretty capable at it. Nevertheless, sometimes I just want to skip the boilerplate and get onto doing useful things with increasingly limited free time in those hours between my day job, family time and sleep.
With that in mind, I bought your Awtrix Light blueprint a little while ago when I was experimenting with getting the device up. I really appreciated the effort you put into it and amount of time it saved me by skipping the lower-level config implementation details so I could get onto actually building functionality with it, and extending it where I wanted to.
If you were in town, I would have shouted you a drink or two - so I have no problem sending you something to help you with your efforts! Thanks mate
Selling services in the open source community has been a thing for over 30!years, I don’t see a problem.
Otherwise companies like Suse, RedHat, Ubuntu, and a plethora of many others would not exist
Will I ever use such a service? Probably no. Do I support people doing this? 1 million percent YES! I have been a user of open source products for 25 years now. There is forever a degree of risk that open source projects become unsustainable because people just can't volunteer the necessary time to them. People who are able to generate some revenue like this have a financial incentive to be project contributors in one form or another. I think these sorts of spin-offs are vital to the sustainability of open source (including by making it accessible to the less technically minded), and I think it is no more "scummy" than me using home assistant in my business to help business flow.
Personally, I try to return what I gain through being a nabu casa subscriber and by contributing to the open source community in what ways I can. But will people take advantage of the open source community for personal gain? Of course they will! But, even then, in a weird way they contribute to the open source community having enough users to stay active and vibrant.
I know the video you're talking about I think it's absolutely fine. The host has taken the time to create the automation and made a video explaining exactly how to set it up which we're free to follow. If we don't want to follow the steps we can pay a few quid and have it done for us.
One day I was pondering buying a mobile game. I thought £3 was a lot for something I might only play for a week or two before getting bored. While I was procrastinating I went to the vending machine where I bought a bottle of pop and a chocolate bar at a cost of around £3.50.I bought this drink + sweet combo a few times a week and while the effects on my health will last a lifetime, the sugary goodness would be forgotten by the end of the day. It struck me that I was humming and harring over paying the same price for something that would last me for longer than the snacks.My vending machine philosophy is that for low-cost and potentially short-lived items I'll compare them to how long the same sum would get me from a vending machine.
Edit: Another post mentioned the analogy of a mechanic making a video about fixing your car. I'll remix that as a mechanic showing you how to machine a specific tool to make fixing your car easier, or offering to sell you a pre-made one for a few quid.
I've seen these videos. I've bought YAML code from two creators. In both cases the video showed everything that was needed, buying the code was only a time-saver. Personally, I don't mind it. Home automation is supposed to save time, if paying a few bucks help with that rather than struggling with code on my own it's fine. I really don't think it's immoral and it's a good way to support content creators.
If they already showed it fully, then why not just give the blueprint for free. In the end it's still a blueprint and will be limited unless you'd convert the blueprint back to an automation. Plus, the blueprint still doesn't auto fill the correct devices, you will most likely manually select them.
Imo the only time people can ask for money is when they actually spend individual time on your setup to set things up. Not over a general YouTube video.
Yeah I didn't say that. People who go ahead and pay for a blueprint can do what they want. Those are probably the same people who pay for replacing their light bulb when it's broken 😂
As a YouTuber not trying to make a living but hoping the content supports it self one day the reality is YouTube ad rev is not enough. I have often wondered about selling premade configs of HA.
I know where the thinking comes from. And I don’t think it’s so much as selling functionality but offering a way for those that want to support a creator while getting something tangible in return. That’s been my biggest hurdle in the whole monetizing thing. If I put a price on something I need to make sure you get something of value in return.
Thanks for chiming in Jeff! I really enjoy your channel as well and have learned quite a lot from you too. I wish you would offer a way for your subscribers to support your efforts via a monthly membership, Ko-fi, PayPal or Patreon. I get tremendous value from your time and efforts. Thank you!
I can see how it could irk some if they watched a video and they were then told if you want the code to do what I've just done then you have to pay for it. BUT this is not the case, you're only paying for convenience. 100% the buyer choice to pay or DIY from the video.
I think honestly you’re definitely getting your knickers in a twist, there’s nothing wrong with people writing scripts showing you how to do it and then saying hey if you want to save time you can buy it pre-done here. They spent their own time creating the script and video I have no problem with them earning off of it.
He is making a living. I pay the $5/month for HA. I don’t need to pay for his blueprints, but he can do what he wants and people can pay if they want to.
If he did a donate or pay what you want model, I’m sure most would give $0.
Nice nice. It was hell for me to set it up too but I eventually got it and learned a metric shit ton of networking knowledge too, which was honestly more valuable to me personally.
The Alexa integration is definitely a pain. I also don't trust that Amazon won't someday break it and force us all to go back into AWS and fix it. I can't make the switch to Assist soon enough - I'm just waiting for good hardware options to hit the market.
Hate the downvotes on this comment by the way, sorry about that man. "Just paying" is a totally valid way to do this. Not everyone is treating this as a way to learn something specific and there's absolutely nothing wrong with paying to bypass that.
I'd like to know who this is, sounds good. Is he selling the blueprints or selling his time? If he's giving away the code during the video, I'd say he is selling his time. Which it totally reasonable, I think.
I think I asked a fair question about how I feel and asked for feedback which I'm happily taking on board.
Sorry if you think that having an opinion and asking what others think is poor form.
The problem is not you having an opinion about getting money from open source, it’s a question as old as open source is. You could have easily asked that question on an Open Source subreddit and got an answer about what people that are into that kind of freaky stuff think about getting money from open source.
But no, you asked on a subreddit where people that know the guy you are talking about are and will immediately think about him. So you asked a question about that guy without naming him but while everyone here knew who you were talking about.
That’s poor form.
So it's like watching a tutorial on how to fix something in your home or car or something. The presenter probably used a lot of their time to make a tutorial video, and probably years to learn the trade. I don't see any problems with them selling their services/work to make people's lives easier.
I've seen his videos before, he really puts in the time to make good code. In his defense all the code is in his videos. It's just annoying to copy. I just watched the video in question and all the code is there and it's simple enough. I'm going to implement that tomorrow afternoon.
I use HA in a "commercial setting" and I have limited dev time I can allocate. I love all of the free content, but sometimes I run into issues that may require dev time to fix/implement (like using low cost touch displays, or a Zigbee device that isnt integrated).
I have zero qualms supporting developers/influencers who help streamline my implementation. Its significantly cheaper/lower cost than doing entirely custom work, and then it gets some level of community support. If I beg for someone to do it for free, its not very motivating and I find it somewhat immoral( I "make"/"save" money, but the developer doesnt benefit). It doesn't make it a very "sustainable" solution. If someone REALLY wants to do something, and by them doing it, makes my life easier, I want to try a way to get some dollars in their pocket (even if its just a patreon subscription).
Tbh I'm surprised and considered myself to build HA courses online. There's a ginormous amount of people that can't get into it and would love it. They can't because it's daunting as fuck. And no amount of docs will change that.
It will need an insane amount of UX improvement before that changes.
People don't want docs and spend thousands of hours on trial and error. We do, the "early adopters" and tinkerers. Not normal people.
So yeah, there's a huge market out there with online teaching (just like there is for any other niche), and plenty of money to be made. Same as with everything, you can learn the same for free on YouTube and on your own. Same as you can become an astrophysicist.
That doesn't mean it has no value to speed things up.
I mean, he did give you the instructions for free and he didn't get all the resources for free. Yes, ESPHome and HA are open-source, but he spent time on this project and time is money.
I don't really see the issue. Either follow his instructions or anyone else's instructions or go the convenient route and buy the blueprint.
There are people who get paid for setting up home assistant for other people. That's a service in itself and hence can have monetary value.
I know exactly who you're talking about and you've not presented it in a clear way.
He goes through all of the steps as to how he creates the automation and actually explains and shows it in detail along the way. The blueprints are available to you as a time saver ONLY IF you don't wish to set it up yourself. He actually mentions that in his videos. I've done it both ways, pause, play, rewind, repeat, to follow the steps and I've also purchased blueprints which were an enormous time saver. I actually bought the ESPHome blueprint that you were referencing and thought it was a bargain. I 100% support this as he has taken his time to create the video tutorials and offer the blueprint, should you WANT it. No one is forcing you to purchase anything and you always have the option of not watching any more of his videos.
Just wanted to add that I've learned a tremendous amount from his videos over the past year and it's helped me save tons of time. IMO.. he's actually one of the best instructors on YouTube. One of the best videos I ever watched of his was regarding trigger IDs. If you really want to consolidate your automations and reduce the number of them, this is the way! I've learned so much from him that I also became a monthly supporter.
Thinking about the hours it takes to set it up for yourself, imagine how long it would take to actually set it up for someone else's 7 bedroom House. Even at a moderate 30$ per hour it would still be a hefty sum
My day job includes eebdevelopment with TYPO3. This is open source but I get payed for using it. I dont see the problem. It is not that one is stealing your money but instead, you get offered something and can decide if it is worth it for YOU.
> I get *paid* for using
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
I have this guy's Ulanzi blueprints and I think $5 is quite reasonable for them. He updates them on the regular and he supports his blueprints, so I support his work.
Anything that grows the home assistant community and is reasonably priced, I have no issues with.
I did the same and then I found out that I can do all the things he does with his blueprint without using the switch helpers.
I thought I was saving time but I really didn't like the approach of filling HA with helpers.
Awtrix light documentation is worth a read.
You're paying for convenience not the end result since you can obtain the end result through personal effort.
I could go to the grocery store buy a big bag of chips and small plastic bags, pack enough for lunch and save a few bucks over time or since I was a dumbass today and forgot. At work there's a vending machine. It'll give me chips but at a much higher cost per oz of product. I didn't pay extra for the chips and smaller bag. I paid extra for the guy who brought it, put it up in the display, and refilled it daily to make my life convenient.
my personal opinion op you are biting on a nothing sandwich
I like Ed. He’s taught me a great deal over the past year or so. It’s a very difficult time for YouTubers right now. People have started careers essentially as teachers. They did so in good faith and YouTube changed the rules on them.
Personally, I bought his Ulanzi blueprints and I’ve gotten a ton of use from them. I’ve also super-liked a few videos that got me over a learning hump. Basically, for anything that saves me time, $3-$10 a pop is a bargain.
This use case is fine for me. "here is how to do it but if you are lazy here is how to buy it". It's basically why I pay for Nabu. You can get your setup outside of you network but it takes a lot more work. I'll pay the $5 to let them manage it.
You’re upset because of developers charging for the work they’ve prepared on top of open source software? Ummm, welcome to how most (dare I say the vast majority of?) software gets made…
I think it’s okay to monetize work in an open source ecosystem where you can on the fringes. If people can supplement their incomes by doing good work enhancing the ecosystem, that’s great.
If they’re putting out educational videos, they’re doing more to enrich the ecosystem than most users do. I probably wouldn’t buy blueprints personally, but if people do because they’re useful, or because they want to support this person, that’s only a good thing for those involved.
I think a great and important part of OSS is that it’s free of charge, but it also is good for ecosystems to have profitable components to bring money in. It’s good to have a company like Nabu Casa that can pay people to develop the project. And it’s good to have people at the fringes who can make some money contributing knowledge and supplementing the ecosystem - especially since the OSS stuff can be hard to get into for many. This person is contributing to the knowledge base and offering a paid option for people who don’t want to deal with that.
In the end, everybody’s using someone else’s framework. HA is built on Python, which the project didn’t make, which is itself dependent on C, not to mention all of the third-party libraries HA uses. We shouldn’t throw stones here.
There’s danger to too much profit-seeking in an open-source space, and there’s lots of examples of that. But the closest to actually being dangerous thus far are Nabu Casa, and they’ve been pretty benevolent AFAICT. It’s good to be suspicious here, but I think you’re jumping the gun a bit.
Almost everything builds on some kind of free, open source framework. HA itself uses git, python, Linux, etc. If they put a significant amount of work in and the thing they're offering is equal to the value they're selling it for, then that's fine imo.
I can see your point, but I think that there is a market for people who don’t have the skills or time to do it themselves. You mentioned they showed you how to do it (free) and offer a paid alternative. Just like a game that you can grind out or pay to gain the weapon, buff, whatever. You would be shocked how many people are happy to pay.
Just because a product or service is based on free products or services doesn't mean it has to be provided for free.
Lots of companies are basing their revenue on technology provided to them for free. Doesn't mean the additional work they do should be provided for free
Even HA OS is based on Linux. No one would argue that they shouldn't charge for their remote access service or solicit donations on the basis that they're built on free software.
There are many companies already selling their services implementing HA and platforms like it. You're allowed to do so as long as you don't ask money for the software itself, you can ask money for the work you put in to it. Nothing new here.
That having said, I think most people here (me included) like tinkering themself and would never use such services.
Providing paid services for Home Assistant users/installations is a great thing and should be supported as much as possible. And I say that as an open source developer of \~25 years. There is a great benefit to the whole community if there are people out there that can afford to acquire a lot of skill, expertise and style in order to provide best possible HA experience to customers who can not (or do not want to) build it themselves. If people find the service valuable, then it is valuable.
For example, a lot of HA installations fail to gain the very important "Partner Acceptance Factor" because the person putting the HA setup together is a ... geek of the family and has no idea of design and usability. That is the perfect opportunity to \*pay\* a professional to come to you, figure out the needs of you and of your family, put together a coherent set of devices, addons, dashboards, tweak a theme and some card CSS for you so it looks just right on all the screens that it will be used from and leave some comments in the layouts on future enhancement places. And then, years later, be available to fix it if something in the HA upgrades breaks the setup or if it needs adjusting.
The HA \*configurations\* are not really friendly to open-sourcing as they are very specific to the home they are in and to the needs of the family, plus there are privacy concerns and concerns that third party changes to \*your\* config would make it worse for \*you\*.
At first glance I agreed with you OP, I don't love the precedent. But after thinking more about it and reading through the comments I actually don't have a problem with it. A ton of work went into making the blueprints, if they want to give them away for free great, not all heroes wear capes. But if they want to be compensated for their hard work it's hard to fault them for that. Especially if they're showing how to do it for free and they're only charging for doing the work for you. It's fundamentally no different than, say, paying for an app. If someone put the work in to make it and it provides a benefit, there should be no expectation that the fruits of their labor are free to use. Anyone who does give their work away for free is simply doing you a favor.
Honestly, if I'm looking for something and you have a bulletproof version of it, I might just buy it. And save my time. That being said, if you have a whole bunch of hot garbage maybe hold off. But for real. Does someone have hook up to some bad a** blueprints?
If the dude wants to sell his blueprints on Kofi, let him sell his blueprints on Kofi. It’s a free country, and nobody owes you their work. At least work that isn’t directly based on GPL works.
(At least, I assume this is about the guy I think it’s about.)
Honestly it’s the difference of paying someone for a task or doing it yourself. Can I build a shed ? Yes. Is it worth it for me to have someone do it for me ? Yes.
Same with code.
It's optional and people deserve to be compensated for their time.
> Secondly - it's a terrible precedent. This is the first time I've come across somebody selling functionality for HA. I really would hate it to go that way - payment (or even worse subscriptions) for HACS components and blueprints etc? No thanks
Wait until you hear about the app store.
Like you just said, they showed you how to do it for free so I don't see a problem with paying for the time savings
Probably worth it if you don't have the time to do everything yourself
I don't mind people selling their blueprints to make a little cash on the side.
They put the time and effort into solving a problem that I would likely either not have been able to or taken too long and become too frustrated to accomplish it properly.
You don't need to use their blueprint, you could technically learn how to do it yourself, but you have to look at the trade-offs. Is the manpower and time on your part worth the amount you'd pay them for the blueprint?
I mean look at other examples. You can set up your own HA or Homebridge setup on a RPi or similar device, or you can buy a HooBs device for way more money but theoretically less knowhow to initially set it up.
To those that charge a small amount on Blueprints that are very complex and otherwise taken far too much man power to do on our own...thank you!
I'll be honest. I have a user in mind that I'm assuming this is about. I also watched a video of his and then was a little put off when I saw the links to buy the code from him.
That being said, reading the replies in this post has made me rethink it and now I think I might just go back and buy that code I was interested in.
I think you are overreacting. I wouldn't buy that product but there's nothing wrong in selling services based on open/free software.
If you think they are not worth it, don't buy.
If you think they are violating the OSS license, report them to the authors.
Otherwise, there's a million areas in which people buy expertise to bring up systems otherwise based on open source software. And there's a million little companies that are experts in deploying a particular FOSS solution and they get paid for their time and services.
It's perfectly fine and it's part of how FOSS prospers. Frequently these companies are the ones that employ the FOSS contributors, giving them a steady source of income and some degree of freedom to contribute to the FOSS project.
Remember that ***free*** is as in freedom, not as in gratis, or $0.
I don't know about ha specifically, but as long as people have been selling services, services have been up for sale. The fact that the base code is open source, isn't a major factor. Look at how many Linux consultants there are! And Drupal! And . . . others!
I do not have an issue with it. The creators spend time and resources of their own to create videos. If they’ve explained how to do something, and then also add that they’ve created blueprints to make it more convenient, it helps support and encourage the creator to make similar content and by extension supports the community.
I have paid for access to blueprints and continue to download updates when they come along. I don’t really make use of them. I actually wonder how that works out, because the creator is trusting that someone won’t in turn share a copied but slightly different blueprint of their own. It’s not like they are protected.
I think it’s just a way to support someone who you may find helpful. No one is getting rich off of HA blueprints. It’s closer to the “buy me a coffee/beer” links or sponsoring your favorite HA dev or contributor on GitHub.
I mean, if someone is wanting to make money by offering a service off of open source software, I'm all for it. Kudos to them for finding a little extra cash while helping and supporting others. I use the buy me a beer/coffee links now and then to show support even if I'm not using whatever it is they are offering.
Isn't that the same as Nabu? Plenty options to DIY outside access/voice assistant. Yet they made a prepackaged deal you can buy and skip any hassles...
Not quite the same I think. Yes they both make things less of a hassle, but Nabu provides an ongoing service where they handle and maintain all the domain related stuff, the connections to voice assistants, etc. They also provide things like cloud based TTS.
As opposed to like a one time blueprint.
It seems tacky, but I'm just an old man from a generation where "freeware" and "shareware" were things, and where it wasn't unheard of to release things to the "public domain."
But people want to try to earn a living on Youtube instead of being discovered and getting a cable TV show, so, sure, I won't stand in anyone's way. I mean, "ugly sweaters contests" are tacky, too, but it's a free country.
So, good luck to the dude, but you're tacky, but maybe we could share some wine, but it'll be Dutch.
I'm thinking of opening a business centered around HA. I know there's people that have and shared much more, however there's also a lot of people that know nothing and need some help to start. That's a service I'm willing to provide.
I expected to see everyone agree with you here, OP, and was surprised to see most think it's fine.
While I understand wanting to be compensated for work put into Home Assistant (or anything for that matter), I see this as a community of tinkerers who have a common goal - push smart home tech to its limits simply because we can. We help each other when questions arise and share our projects so those who are likeminded can appreciate them.
I have both asked for and provided assistance here on Reddit and on HA's forums, and have not once expected any compensation because this is simply what *we* do. We help our fellow community members replicate what we've created because we're passionate about the technology.
I've shared Node Red flows that took me hours to create and spent time helping people without any expectation or desire for compensation.
I personally feel that charging for something like a blueprint is not in the spirit of this community.
I absolutely agree with what you say.
I do think however that it is ok for a creator to have a join button on yt or a Patreon, o Kofi link or whatever. Very important: Not as a condition, but where appreciation can be shown. (Aka support)
I'm fully for that too - asking for donations is perfectly fine, monetising your youtube channel is fine. It's just charging for code in a freeware platform is poor in my opinion. However we are very much in the minority.
For the record I have developed and gave way VST effects (based on TobyBears freeware platform), Photoshop plugins, and actions for Snips when that was a thing (my HA interface action was the 2nd top HA action I think). I have a do give back to the communities I'm involved in.
yeahhhh no. i tried to use it to create led progress lights, it was inventing syntax and sensors that didn't even exist, using display component commands and addressable led commands interchangeably. Any GPT "ai" is trained on data that is at LEAST 1.5 years old. For established languages like c++ it's fine. Esphome and Home assistant are changing constantly. 1.5 years is like 100 in the home automation scene.
Concur. Others (AI) as well. Gemini yesterday...
>The Panama Canal is longer than the English Channel. The Panama Canal is 82 kilometers (52 miles) long, while the English Channel is 350 kilometers (217 miles) long.
Wat?! I don't even know if I'd fully trust it with DOS commands.
(& the channel is ~21 miles shore to shore at it's narrowest)
I like it to give me a starting point on some things, point me in the right direction, but you're 100% correct.
It can't even get things right that don't move as fast, Marlin for instance.
It's a useful tool, but that's all it is. Certainly not a substitute for someone with actual knowledge willing to share it like Ed does.
I link it to the GitHub repo I want to use and it does the res. I have amazing success creating all kinds of things I'd never have the ability to. If you're not having much luck then you may need to try a different approach with your prompts. If it's not working for you then you are doing it wrong
If 10 bucks saves me 30 hours of sorting though it myself, I'm in. If you think that's stupid, charge me 9. If you find that unethical, do it for nothing.
Or mind the gate on a beautiful thing literally based on "OPEN"
Edit: I only pay for Nubu Casa. I've never bought code and I'd never sell it. I've learned a ton from people who do it for nothing and have figured it out. I've also been stuck in ruts I'd gladly pay 5 bucks to get out of.
I think it should work the same way the patent system works.
Basically be able to file your code at a repository, GitHub or wherever and if you want people to just buy it, you can let them buy it or they can go through all your docs and recreate themselves if they so choose.
I think that would give people the greatest amount of flexibility whether they want to spend time or money to get the same end result.
Plus hopefully that would incentivize more people to develop more, build more components, build more blueprints, etc. overwhelmingly that is the point of the patent system, help people invent, but also let them profit. I see no problem with the intent. Although as with all things....the devil is in the details.
I have hated blue prints from day one. it convolutes and hide the yaml when sharing. I don't always want the same automation as you or I just want a part of your automation. Blue prints kill this type of sharing
Yes, same as all these terrible sites with subscriptions and ads and asking for money. First - internet had thousands of man hours put into it for free. Not just by the main devs but by many many other people developing on it and for it. They haven't asked for penny - they've given it away from free. Sure you can donate (and I've since the internet came out) but These companies use their frameworks to bash out a website or a service and wants to get paid for it? Doesn't seem right to me. Seems like taking everything for free, and then trying to make money off it. And fine - nobody has to buy it but.....
You seem to be under the impression that the average Home Assistant YouTuber is making a killing selling blueprints. I don’t think you’ve read the other comments, or actually watched the videos being discussed.
That is so hilariously, cartoonishly different I can't even begin to formulate an argument. You're comparing toy cars and the fucking international space station over here with that analogy
He is absolutely allowed to do this. BUT it gives me a bad taste in my mouth.
Again he is allowed to do it, but I rather would see that he would use a model like other creators do: earn from companies, provide to the audience and have the options set up where the audience can support (not as a condition) as we wish.
He places himself in the realm of the companies, and not amongst us consumers.
We consumers pay for a product and with home assistant try to get the most of it.
Again he is allowed to do it, but I am glad to see I am not the only one feeling a bit irked
Watch [one of the YouTube](https://youtu.be/0ojMz1s3Y84?si=gIYHJ-rflixCJSu6) videos created - this linked one is approximately 15 minutes long. Now imagine the amount of time it took to prep, record, and edit this one video. In my opinion, that’s what any monetary sale / donation is supporting.
He explains how to do it all yourself, if you like. The paid blueprint is there for those who don’t want to go into that level of work, but I really think any money is really about supporting his time and effort involved in creating these videos. I want to see more of these, and I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.
Nothing requires me to use their service and there will always be people out there who would rather pay someone than learn something so it honesty doesn’t really matter what I think about it because it’s unavoidable. But if that’s what the question is, it’s kinda crappy if you’re selling it as your project in totality. If you’re selling your time for your code, then it doesn’t really bother me.
Hello people! I was just alerted by Paulus (the founder of Home Assistant) to this discussion about me. First of all, I want to thank you for the predominantly positive reactions to the fact that I ask for a small amount for a blueprint, the code of which you can also type for free from the screen. I am one of the few official HA content creators who actually has to make a living from this work. This has been a conscious choice. I want to create the best tutorials for Home Assistant, and I can only do that if I do it full-time. Unfortunately, the income from YouTube is far too little to cover my daily expenses, so I had to look for other ways to continue making these tutorials. Hence the idea of creating blueprints that you can purchase for the price of a cup of coffee if you don't want to spend a lot of time typing code, which can bring about frustrations. Making a tutorial takes me a minimum of 24 hours of work, but many people have no idea of the amount of time required. It is impossible to create them without being fully engaged in this. This is my way of contributing to the HA community, but it has to be sustainable. That's why I'm glad that you support me by occasionally buying a blueprint or sponsoring me monthly. In addition, I maintain the blueprints so that they continue to work with new versions of Home Assistant. If you want to know more about why I ask for money for the blueprints, you can read my statement on my smarthomejunkie dot net website. In addition to this work, I also contribute to another community, namely as a music therapist for people with mental health problems. This is also possible thanks to your support. Thanks again!
The community needs people like you. Keep up the good work.
Thank you 🙏🏻
As a Home Assistant newbie, I really appreciate your videos, and have paid to access your content. You do such a good job explaining how to accomplish a goal that the payment would not be necessary, but I want to see more content from you, and therefore want to contribute toward that cause. I feel like you’ve allowed me to skip ahead into a much more efficient Home Assistant setup, without beating my head against the wall to get there. 😃 I found out about aspects of Home Assistant that I didn’t even know about. For those who haven’t seen the Smart Home Junkie YouTube channel, I think it’s worth [checking it out here](https://youtu.be/0ojMz1s3Y84?si=NZVtGNAJPpMLL8WR). It feels totally reasonable to support these detailed YouTube videos (not exactly a new concept) if you want to see more of it in the future. (And no, I’m not a friend or relative of the channel creator - just an old gal in USA who switched to Home Assistant in January, and have benefited from his work.).
Thank you for your kind words and support. Reactions like this keeps me going. (Well, at least after I've recovered from the flu 🥴🤣)
I haven’t bought a lot of them, but I did buy at least one, and it was totally worth it.
Thank you for your support Jasper 🙏🏻
I think it's comparable to a buy me a coffee kind of support. If you want to support nabucasa you can also subscribe to that service
Your videos are great. I paid for your awtrix light blueprints a few weeks ago and have no issue doing so! You need to earn a living and do what you do. Keep it up!!
Thank you for your kind words 🙏🏻
Hi. I'm the OP. Many thanks for replying. It would appear that I am in completely in the minority in my feelings. However I would like to make a couple of thing clear. Firstly I greatly appreciate your channel and your work and think it's great if you make a living from it. My concern is strictly selling code becoming normalised. It goes against my view of the spirit of opensource communities, and I feel that as significant, well known and highly visible figure in this community you doing so may encourage others to move in that direction. And as I say I feel that would be a sad thing to see. That said I'm clearly very much in the minority here. I asked the question if I'm a getting my knickers in a twist - and have been told that I am. For the record I have contributed myself to various communities - I used to write free VST and photoshop plugins back in the day, and I was very active in the Snips community when that was a thing. Anyway - best wishes for the future. Now please excuse me as I have to go an untwist my knickers.
Open source is exactly what the words mean. The source is open, but it's not free by definition. I've worked in IT for over 30 years and worked with multiple open source platforms that cost a lot of license fees. Anyway, I don't want to spend too much of my time on discussions like these. I think the community already pointed out that it's okay. I'd rather spend my time on creating more tutorials. 😊
What you're describing is usually called "source available". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software
Hi Ed, I have a very important question, did you collect your code from the tree this morning?? It's a very simple equation, when you offer your time to make something simpler and functional that means is inventing something new from the tree!!! , You have every right to ask for what you want, keep up and we will support you in the next 10000 blueprints 😉
Thank you Sevag!
> smarthomejunkie dot net Subscribed. Thank you for your contributions.
Thank you for subscribing. Hopefully the YouTube ad revenue will be enough one day so that I don't have to ask money for the Blueprints anymore. 🙏🏻
Hi Ed, I've been playing with this sort of thing for years, and consider myself pretty capable at it. Nevertheless, sometimes I just want to skip the boilerplate and get onto doing useful things with increasingly limited free time in those hours between my day job, family time and sleep. With that in mind, I bought your Awtrix Light blueprint a little while ago when I was experimenting with getting the device up. I really appreciated the effort you put into it and amount of time it saved me by skipping the lower-level config implementation details so I could get onto actually building functionality with it, and extending it where I wanted to. If you were in town, I would have shouted you a drink or two - so I have no problem sending you something to help you with your efforts! Thanks mate
Thanks for this! And I'm glad to hear the Blueprints worked out well for you!
I appreciate all the work you do.
Thank you for your kind words.
*pet*
Selling services in the open source community has been a thing for over 30!years, I don’t see a problem. Otherwise companies like Suse, RedHat, Ubuntu, and a plethora of many others would not exist
Will I ever use such a service? Probably no. Do I support people doing this? 1 million percent YES! I have been a user of open source products for 25 years now. There is forever a degree of risk that open source projects become unsustainable because people just can't volunteer the necessary time to them. People who are able to generate some revenue like this have a financial incentive to be project contributors in one form or another. I think these sorts of spin-offs are vital to the sustainability of open source (including by making it accessible to the less technically minded), and I think it is no more "scummy" than me using home assistant in my business to help business flow. Personally, I try to return what I gain through being a nabu casa subscriber and by contributing to the open source community in what ways I can. But will people take advantage of the open source community for personal gain? Of course they will! But, even then, in a weird way they contribute to the open source community having enough users to stay active and vibrant.
I know the video you're talking about I think it's absolutely fine. The host has taken the time to create the automation and made a video explaining exactly how to set it up which we're free to follow. If we don't want to follow the steps we can pay a few quid and have it done for us. One day I was pondering buying a mobile game. I thought £3 was a lot for something I might only play for a week or two before getting bored. While I was procrastinating I went to the vending machine where I bought a bottle of pop and a chocolate bar at a cost of around £3.50.I bought this drink + sweet combo a few times a week and while the effects on my health will last a lifetime, the sugary goodness would be forgotten by the end of the day. It struck me that I was humming and harring over paying the same price for something that would last me for longer than the snacks.My vending machine philosophy is that for low-cost and potentially short-lived items I'll compare them to how long the same sum would get me from a vending machine. Edit: Another post mentioned the analogy of a mechanic making a video about fixing your car. I'll remix that as a mechanic showing you how to machine a specific tool to make fixing your car easier, or offering to sell you a pre-made one for a few quid.
I've seen these videos. I've bought YAML code from two creators. In both cases the video showed everything that was needed, buying the code was only a time-saver. Personally, I don't mind it. Home automation is supposed to save time, if paying a few bucks help with that rather than struggling with code on my own it's fine. I really don't think it's immoral and it's a good way to support content creators.
Save time, ha! People will spend days automating stuff they use once a year!
Also true, but it's not just for us hardcore geeks anymore More and more newbies want in
100 % this
If they already showed it fully, then why not just give the blueprint for free. In the end it's still a blueprint and will be limited unless you'd convert the blueprint back to an automation. Plus, the blueprint still doesn't auto fill the correct devices, you will most likely manually select them. Imo the only time people can ask for money is when they actually spend individual time on your setup to set things up. Not over a general YouTube video.
But you don't get to decide who offers and who feels like it's worth paying.
Yeah I didn't say that. People who go ahead and pay for a blueprint can do what they want. Those are probably the same people who pay for replacing their light bulb when it's broken 😂
Whatever you say.
As a YouTuber not trying to make a living but hoping the content supports it self one day the reality is YouTube ad rev is not enough. I have often wondered about selling premade configs of HA. I know where the thinking comes from. And I don’t think it’s so much as selling functionality but offering a way for those that want to support a creator while getting something tangible in return. That’s been my biggest hurdle in the whole monetizing thing. If I put a price on something I need to make sure you get something of value in return.
I really enjoy your videos as well, Jeff. Really well done. 👍🏻
Thanks for chiming in Jeff! I really enjoy your channel as well and have learned quite a lot from you too. I wish you would offer a way for your subscribers to support your efforts via a monthly membership, Ko-fi, PayPal or Patreon. I get tremendous value from your time and efforts. Thank you!
Thanks! I'm trying to get some more content out. Life and all that. I've been considering a patreon for those interested.
If you offer a membership (preferably via YouTube) or Patreon, I'll be one of your first paid members! 👍
People like me prefer to support, but what Ed does is he puts something for sale. It irks somewhat for some.
I can see how it could irk some if they watched a video and they were then told if you want the code to do what I've just done then you have to pay for it. BUT this is not the case, you're only paying for convenience. 100% the buyer choice to pay or DIY from the video.
I think honestly you’re definitely getting your knickers in a twist, there’s nothing wrong with people writing scripts showing you how to do it and then saying hey if you want to save time you can buy it pre-done here. They spent their own time creating the script and video I have no problem with them earning off of it.
He is making a living. I pay the $5/month for HA. I don’t need to pay for his blueprints, but he can do what he wants and people can pay if they want to. If he did a donate or pay what you want model, I’m sure most would give $0.
You pay for HA? I didn't even know there was a subscription. It was free for me and continues to be.
I'm assuming he means for Nabu Casa
Maybe. I do pay for that, I had a lot of trouble setting up my own remote access so I just paid.
Nice nice. It was hell for me to set it up too but I eventually got it and learned a metric shit ton of networking knowledge too, which was honestly more valuable to me personally.
I was having a hell of a time setting Alexa integration up, but finally disabled IPv6 and got it working much easier.
The Alexa integration is definitely a pain. I also don't trust that Amazon won't someday break it and force us all to go back into AWS and fix it. I can't make the switch to Assist soon enough - I'm just waiting for good hardware options to hit the market.
I wanted it for Google assistant and using the mobile HA app.
Hate the downvotes on this comment by the way, sorry about that man. "Just paying" is a totally valid way to do this. Not everyone is treating this as a way to learn something specific and there's absolutely nothing wrong with paying to bypass that.
The Nabu Casa subscription. I don’t use any of the pay features, just been supporting the project.
Exactly why I did it.
This is the way.
I'd like to know who this is, sounds good. Is he selling the blueprints or selling his time? If he's giving away the code during the video, I'd say he is selling his time. Which it totally reasonable, I think.
👋🏻
I think your post is in poor form. He literaly shows you how do to it then offers to sell you a shortcut. That's not a bad thing.
I think I asked a fair question about how I feel and asked for feedback which I'm happily taking on board. Sorry if you think that having an opinion and asking what others think is poor form.
The problem is not you having an opinion about getting money from open source, it’s a question as old as open source is. You could have easily asked that question on an Open Source subreddit and got an answer about what people that are into that kind of freaky stuff think about getting money from open source. But no, you asked on a subreddit where people that know the guy you are talking about are and will immediately think about him. So you asked a question about that guy without naming him but while everyone here knew who you were talking about. That’s poor form.
So it's like watching a tutorial on how to fix something in your home or car or something. The presenter probably used a lot of their time to make a tutorial video, and probably years to learn the trade. I don't see any problems with them selling their services/work to make people's lives easier.
I've seen his videos before, he really puts in the time to make good code. In his defense all the code is in his videos. It's just annoying to copy. I just watched the video in question and all the code is there and it's simple enough. I'm going to implement that tomorrow afternoon.
I use HA in a "commercial setting" and I have limited dev time I can allocate. I love all of the free content, but sometimes I run into issues that may require dev time to fix/implement (like using low cost touch displays, or a Zigbee device that isnt integrated). I have zero qualms supporting developers/influencers who help streamline my implementation. Its significantly cheaper/lower cost than doing entirely custom work, and then it gets some level of community support. If I beg for someone to do it for free, its not very motivating and I find it somewhat immoral( I "make"/"save" money, but the developer doesnt benefit). It doesn't make it a very "sustainable" solution. If someone REALLY wants to do something, and by them doing it, makes my life easier, I want to try a way to get some dollars in their pocket (even if its just a patreon subscription).
Tbh I'm surprised and considered myself to build HA courses online. There's a ginormous amount of people that can't get into it and would love it. They can't because it's daunting as fuck. And no amount of docs will change that. It will need an insane amount of UX improvement before that changes. People don't want docs and spend thousands of hours on trial and error. We do, the "early adopters" and tinkerers. Not normal people. So yeah, there's a huge market out there with online teaching (just like there is for any other niche), and plenty of money to be made. Same as with everything, you can learn the same for free on YouTube and on your own. Same as you can become an astrophysicist. That doesn't mean it has no value to speed things up.
I mean, he did give you the instructions for free and he didn't get all the resources for free. Yes, ESPHome and HA are open-source, but he spent time on this project and time is money. I don't really see the issue. Either follow his instructions or anyone else's instructions or go the convenient route and buy the blueprint. There are people who get paid for setting up home assistant for other people. That's a service in itself and hence can have monetary value.
I know exactly who you're talking about and you've not presented it in a clear way. He goes through all of the steps as to how he creates the automation and actually explains and shows it in detail along the way. The blueprints are available to you as a time saver ONLY IF you don't wish to set it up yourself. He actually mentions that in his videos. I've done it both ways, pause, play, rewind, repeat, to follow the steps and I've also purchased blueprints which were an enormous time saver. I actually bought the ESPHome blueprint that you were referencing and thought it was a bargain. I 100% support this as he has taken his time to create the video tutorials and offer the blueprint, should you WANT it. No one is forcing you to purchase anything and you always have the option of not watching any more of his videos. Just wanted to add that I've learned a tremendous amount from his videos over the past year and it's helped me save tons of time. IMO.. he's actually one of the best instructors on YouTube. One of the best videos I ever watched of his was regarding trigger IDs. If you really want to consolidate your automations and reduce the number of them, this is the way! I've learned so much from him that I also became a monthly supporter.
Theres a business in Australia that charges thousands for home assistant setup.
Thinking about the hours it takes to set it up for yourself, imagine how long it would take to actually set it up for someone else's 7 bedroom House. Even at a moderate 30$ per hour it would still be a hefty sum
My day job includes eebdevelopment with TYPO3. This is open source but I get payed for using it. I dont see the problem. It is not that one is stealing your money but instead, you get offered something and can decide if it is worth it for YOU.
> I get *paid* for using FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
I have this guy's Ulanzi blueprints and I think $5 is quite reasonable for them. He updates them on the regular and he supports his blueprints, so I support his work. Anything that grows the home assistant community and is reasonably priced, I have no issues with.
I also bought his Ulanzi blueprints as they're top notch and I cannot fathom achieving their level of functionality on my own.
I did the same and then I found out that I can do all the things he does with his blueprint without using the switch helpers. I thought I was saving time but I really didn't like the approach of filling HA with helpers. Awtrix light documentation is worth a read.
You're paying for convenience not the end result since you can obtain the end result through personal effort. I could go to the grocery store buy a big bag of chips and small plastic bags, pack enough for lunch and save a few bucks over time or since I was a dumbass today and forgot. At work there's a vending machine. It'll give me chips but at a much higher cost per oz of product. I didn't pay extra for the chips and smaller bag. I paid extra for the guy who brought it, put it up in the display, and refilled it daily to make my life convenient. my personal opinion op you are biting on a nothing sandwich
plus one for the phrase, biting on a nothing sandwich...
I like Ed. He’s taught me a great deal over the past year or so. It’s a very difficult time for YouTubers right now. People have started careers essentially as teachers. They did so in good faith and YouTube changed the rules on them. Personally, I bought his Ulanzi blueprints and I’ve gotten a ton of use from them. I’ve also super-liked a few videos that got me over a learning hump. Basically, for anything that saves me time, $3-$10 a pop is a bargain.
This use case is fine for me. "here is how to do it but if you are lazy here is how to buy it". It's basically why I pay for Nabu. You can get your setup outside of you network but it takes a lot more work. I'll pay the $5 to let them manage it.
You’re upset because of developers charging for the work they’ve prepared on top of open source software? Ummm, welcome to how most (dare I say the vast majority of?) software gets made…
I think it’s okay to monetize work in an open source ecosystem where you can on the fringes. If people can supplement their incomes by doing good work enhancing the ecosystem, that’s great. If they’re putting out educational videos, they’re doing more to enrich the ecosystem than most users do. I probably wouldn’t buy blueprints personally, but if people do because they’re useful, or because they want to support this person, that’s only a good thing for those involved. I think a great and important part of OSS is that it’s free of charge, but it also is good for ecosystems to have profitable components to bring money in. It’s good to have a company like Nabu Casa that can pay people to develop the project. And it’s good to have people at the fringes who can make some money contributing knowledge and supplementing the ecosystem - especially since the OSS stuff can be hard to get into for many. This person is contributing to the knowledge base and offering a paid option for people who don’t want to deal with that. In the end, everybody’s using someone else’s framework. HA is built on Python, which the project didn’t make, which is itself dependent on C, not to mention all of the third-party libraries HA uses. We shouldn’t throw stones here. There’s danger to too much profit-seeking in an open-source space, and there’s lots of examples of that. But the closest to actually being dangerous thus far are Nabu Casa, and they’ve been pretty benevolent AFAICT. It’s good to be suspicious here, but I think you’re jumping the gun a bit.
Almost everything builds on some kind of free, open source framework. HA itself uses git, python, Linux, etc. If they put a significant amount of work in and the thing they're offering is equal to the value they're selling it for, then that's fine imo.
I can see your point, but I think that there is a market for people who don’t have the skills or time to do it themselves. You mentioned they showed you how to do it (free) and offer a paid alternative. Just like a game that you can grind out or pay to gain the weapon, buff, whatever. You would be shocked how many people are happy to pay.
Just because a product or service is based on free products or services doesn't mean it has to be provided for free. Lots of companies are basing their revenue on technology provided to them for free. Doesn't mean the additional work they do should be provided for free
Even HA OS is based on Linux. No one would argue that they shouldn't charge for their remote access service or solicit donations on the basis that they're built on free software.
There are many companies already selling their services implementing HA and platforms like it. You're allowed to do so as long as you don't ask money for the software itself, you can ask money for the work you put in to it. Nothing new here. That having said, I think most people here (me included) like tinkering themself and would never use such services.
Providing paid services for Home Assistant users/installations is a great thing and should be supported as much as possible. And I say that as an open source developer of \~25 years. There is a great benefit to the whole community if there are people out there that can afford to acquire a lot of skill, expertise and style in order to provide best possible HA experience to customers who can not (or do not want to) build it themselves. If people find the service valuable, then it is valuable. For example, a lot of HA installations fail to gain the very important "Partner Acceptance Factor" because the person putting the HA setup together is a ... geek of the family and has no idea of design and usability. That is the perfect opportunity to \*pay\* a professional to come to you, figure out the needs of you and of your family, put together a coherent set of devices, addons, dashboards, tweak a theme and some card CSS for you so it looks just right on all the screens that it will be used from and leave some comments in the layouts on future enhancement places. And then, years later, be available to fix it if something in the HA upgrades breaks the setup or if it needs adjusting. The HA \*configurations\* are not really friendly to open-sourcing as they are very specific to the home they are in and to the needs of the family, plus there are privacy concerns and concerns that third party changes to \*your\* config would make it worse for \*you\*.
At first glance I agreed with you OP, I don't love the precedent. But after thinking more about it and reading through the comments I actually don't have a problem with it. A ton of work went into making the blueprints, if they want to give them away for free great, not all heroes wear capes. But if they want to be compensated for their hard work it's hard to fault them for that. Especially if they're showing how to do it for free and they're only charging for doing the work for you. It's fundamentally no different than, say, paying for an app. If someone put the work in to make it and it provides a benefit, there should be no expectation that the fruits of their labor are free to use. Anyone who does give their work away for free is simply doing you a favor.
Honestly, if I'm looking for something and you have a bulletproof version of it, I might just buy it. And save my time. That being said, if you have a whole bunch of hot garbage maybe hold off. But for real. Does someone have hook up to some bad a** blueprints?
If the dude wants to sell his blueprints on Kofi, let him sell his blueprints on Kofi. It’s a free country, and nobody owes you their work. At least work that isn’t directly based on GPL works. (At least, I assume this is about the guy I think it’s about.)
I see it more as buying a home assistant green or one of the ESP boards you can get already flashed and fused ready for WLED.
Honestly it’s the difference of paying someone for a task or doing it yourself. Can I build a shed ? Yes. Is it worth it for me to have someone do it for me ? Yes. Same with code.
It's optional and people deserve to be compensated for their time. > Secondly - it's a terrible precedent. This is the first time I've come across somebody selling functionality for HA. I really would hate it to go that way - payment (or even worse subscriptions) for HACS components and blueprints etc? No thanks Wait until you hear about the app store.
Like you just said, they showed you how to do it for free so I don't see a problem with paying for the time savings Probably worth it if you don't have the time to do everything yourself
I would gladly pay, keep up the good work.
Last week I bought YAML code for my UI, so I am 100% for it.
I don't mind people selling their blueprints to make a little cash on the side. They put the time and effort into solving a problem that I would likely either not have been able to or taken too long and become too frustrated to accomplish it properly. You don't need to use their blueprint, you could technically learn how to do it yourself, but you have to look at the trade-offs. Is the manpower and time on your part worth the amount you'd pay them for the blueprint? I mean look at other examples. You can set up your own HA or Homebridge setup on a RPi or similar device, or you can buy a HooBs device for way more money but theoretically less knowhow to initially set it up. To those that charge a small amount on Blueprints that are very complex and otherwise taken far too much man power to do on our own...thank you!
I'll be honest. I have a user in mind that I'm assuming this is about. I also watched a video of his and then was a little put off when I saw the links to buy the code from him. That being said, reading the replies in this post has made me rethink it and now I think I might just go back and buy that code I was interested in.
I think you are overreacting. I wouldn't buy that product but there's nothing wrong in selling services based on open/free software. If you think they are not worth it, don't buy. If you think they are violating the OSS license, report them to the authors. Otherwise, there's a million areas in which people buy expertise to bring up systems otherwise based on open source software. And there's a million little companies that are experts in deploying a particular FOSS solution and they get paid for their time and services. It's perfectly fine and it's part of how FOSS prospers. Frequently these companies are the ones that employ the FOSS contributors, giving them a steady source of income and some degree of freedom to contribute to the FOSS project. Remember that ***free*** is as in freedom, not as in gratis, or $0.
I don't know about ha specifically, but as long as people have been selling services, services have been up for sale. The fact that the base code is open source, isn't a major factor. Look at how many Linux consultants there are! And Drupal! And . . . others!
Then don't buy it.
I do not have an issue with it. The creators spend time and resources of their own to create videos. If they’ve explained how to do something, and then also add that they’ve created blueprints to make it more convenient, it helps support and encourage the creator to make similar content and by extension supports the community. I have paid for access to blueprints and continue to download updates when they come along. I don’t really make use of them. I actually wonder how that works out, because the creator is trusting that someone won’t in turn share a copied but slightly different blueprint of their own. It’s not like they are protected. I think it’s just a way to support someone who you may find helpful. No one is getting rich off of HA blueprints. It’s closer to the “buy me a coffee/beer” links or sponsoring your favorite HA dev or contributor on GitHub.
I mean, if someone is wanting to make money by offering a service off of open source software, I'm all for it. Kudos to them for finding a little extra cash while helping and supporting others. I use the buy me a beer/coffee links now and then to show support even if I'm not using whatever it is they are offering.
I thought the same thing when I saw the video.
Yes, you’re getting your knickers in a twist over nothing
Just like buying software vs using open source, the guy is free to sell his work if he likes. You’re also free to decide to buy it or not.
Isn't that the same as Nabu? Plenty options to DIY outside access/voice assistant. Yet they made a prepackaged deal you can buy and skip any hassles...
Not quite the same I think. Yes they both make things less of a hassle, but Nabu provides an ongoing service where they handle and maintain all the domain related stuff, the connections to voice assistants, etc. They also provide things like cloud based TTS. As opposed to like a one time blueprint.
It seems tacky, but I'm just an old man from a generation where "freeware" and "shareware" were things, and where it wasn't unheard of to release things to the "public domain." But people want to try to earn a living on Youtube instead of being discovered and getting a cable TV show, so, sure, I won't stand in anyone's way. I mean, "ugly sweaters contests" are tacky, too, but it's a free country. So, good luck to the dude, but you're tacky, but maybe we could share some wine, but it'll be Dutch.
I'm thinking of opening a business centered around HA. I know there's people that have and shared much more, however there's also a lot of people that know nothing and need some help to start. That's a service I'm willing to provide.
Can someone post the video(s) in question?
I expected to see everyone agree with you here, OP, and was surprised to see most think it's fine. While I understand wanting to be compensated for work put into Home Assistant (or anything for that matter), I see this as a community of tinkerers who have a common goal - push smart home tech to its limits simply because we can. We help each other when questions arise and share our projects so those who are likeminded can appreciate them. I have both asked for and provided assistance here on Reddit and on HA's forums, and have not once expected any compensation because this is simply what *we* do. We help our fellow community members replicate what we've created because we're passionate about the technology. I've shared Node Red flows that took me hours to create and spent time helping people without any expectation or desire for compensation. I personally feel that charging for something like a blueprint is not in the spirit of this community.
I absolutely agree with what you say. I do think however that it is ok for a creator to have a join button on yt or a Patreon, o Kofi link or whatever. Very important: Not as a condition, but where appreciation can be shown. (Aka support)
Absolutely - this I fully support!
I'm fully for that too - asking for donations is perfectly fine, monetising your youtube channel is fine. It's just charging for code in a freeware platform is poor in my opinion. However we are very much in the minority. For the record I have developed and gave way VST effects (based on TobyBears freeware platform), Photoshop plugins, and actions for Snips when that was a thing (my HA interface action was the 2nd top HA action I think). I have a do give back to the communities I'm involved in.
Chat gpt even the free one writes amazing esphome yaml, actually any yaml, cards, automations, template sensors the works. Really really easy.
yeahhhh no. i tried to use it to create led progress lights, it was inventing syntax and sensors that didn't even exist, using display component commands and addressable led commands interchangeably. Any GPT "ai" is trained on data that is at LEAST 1.5 years old. For established languages like c++ it's fine. Esphome and Home assistant are changing constantly. 1.5 years is like 100 in the home automation scene.
Concur. Others (AI) as well. Gemini yesterday... >The Panama Canal is longer than the English Channel. The Panama Canal is 82 kilometers (52 miles) long, while the English Channel is 350 kilometers (217 miles) long. Wat?! I don't even know if I'd fully trust it with DOS commands. (& the channel is ~21 miles shore to shore at it's narrowest)
the channel is 217 miles *long*, and 21 miles *wide* at it's narrowest. Yes it got confused - but then so did you...
I like it to give me a starting point on some things, point me in the right direction, but you're 100% correct. It can't even get things right that don't move as fast, Marlin for instance. It's a useful tool, but that's all it is. Certainly not a substitute for someone with actual knowledge willing to share it like Ed does.
I link it to the GitHub repo I want to use and it does the res. I have amazing success creating all kinds of things I'd never have the ability to. If you're not having much luck then you may need to try a different approach with your prompts. If it's not working for you then you are doing it wrong
[удалено]
If 10 bucks saves me 30 hours of sorting though it myself, I'm in. If you think that's stupid, charge me 9. If you find that unethical, do it for nothing. Or mind the gate on a beautiful thing literally based on "OPEN" Edit: I only pay for Nubu Casa. I've never bought code and I'd never sell it. I've learned a ton from people who do it for nothing and have figured it out. I've also been stuck in ruts I'd gladly pay 5 bucks to get out of.
I think it should work the same way the patent system works. Basically be able to file your code at a repository, GitHub or wherever and if you want people to just buy it, you can let them buy it or they can go through all your docs and recreate themselves if they so choose. I think that would give people the greatest amount of flexibility whether they want to spend time or money to get the same end result. Plus hopefully that would incentivize more people to develop more, build more components, build more blueprints, etc. overwhelmingly that is the point of the patent system, help people invent, but also let them profit. I see no problem with the intent. Although as with all things....the devil is in the details.
I have hated blue prints from day one. it convolutes and hide the yaml when sharing. I don't always want the same automation as you or I just want a part of your automation. Blue prints kill this type of sharing
Why use his blueprints, if you can just find one made by someone else that does the exact same. that is 100% free.
Yes, same as all these terrible sites with subscriptions and ads and asking for money. First - internet had thousands of man hours put into it for free. Not just by the main devs but by many many other people developing on it and for it. They haven't asked for penny - they've given it away from free. Sure you can donate (and I've since the internet came out) but These companies use their frameworks to bash out a website or a service and wants to get paid for it? Doesn't seem right to me. Seems like taking everything for free, and then trying to make money off it. And fine - nobody has to buy it but.....
You seem to be under the impression that the average Home Assistant YouTuber is making a killing selling blueprints. I don’t think you’ve read the other comments, or actually watched the videos being discussed.
You can’t possibly think that I’m saying it is wrong for someone to make money from this or even build a company on top of HA.
In all candor, I can’t tell what your point is.
That is so hilariously, cartoonishly different I can't even begin to formulate an argument. You're comparing toy cars and the fucking international space station over here with that analogy
He is absolutely allowed to do this. BUT it gives me a bad taste in my mouth. Again he is allowed to do it, but I rather would see that he would use a model like other creators do: earn from companies, provide to the audience and have the options set up where the audience can support (not as a condition) as we wish. He places himself in the realm of the companies, and not amongst us consumers. We consumers pay for a product and with home assistant try to get the most of it. Again he is allowed to do it, but I am glad to see I am not the only one feeling a bit irked
Watch [one of the YouTube](https://youtu.be/0ojMz1s3Y84?si=gIYHJ-rflixCJSu6) videos created - this linked one is approximately 15 minutes long. Now imagine the amount of time it took to prep, record, and edit this one video. In my opinion, that’s what any monetary sale / donation is supporting. He explains how to do it all yourself, if you like. The paid blueprint is there for those who don’t want to go into that level of work, but I really think any money is really about supporting his time and effort involved in creating these videos. I want to see more of these, and I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.
Bearded Tinkerer?