Submission + - Home Assistant Has a New Foundation, Goal To Become a Consumer Brand (arstechnica.com)
After an announcement this weekend, however, Home Assistant's shape is a bit easier to draw out. All of the project's ambitions now fall under the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit organization that now contains Home Assistant and more than 240 related bits. Its mission statement is refreshing, and refreshingly honest about the state of modern open source projects. "We've done this to create a bulwark against surveillance capitalism, the risk of buyout, and open-source projects becoming abandonware," the Open Home Foundation states in a press release. "To an extent, this protection extends even against our future selves—so that smart home users can continue to benefit for years, if not decades. No matter what comes." Along with keeping Home Assistant funded and secure from buy-outs or mission creep, the foundation intends to help fund and collaborate with external projects crucial to Home Assistant, like Z-Wave JS and Zigbee2MQTT.
Home Assistant's ambitions don't stop with money and board seats, though. They aim to "be an active political advocate" in the smart home field, toward three primary principles:
— Data privacy, which means devices with local-only options, and cloud services with explicit permissions — Choice in using devices with one another through open standards and local APIs — Sustainability by repurposing old devices and appliances beyond company-defined lifetimes
Notably, individuals cannot contribute modest-size donations to the Open Home Foundation. Instead, the foundation asks supporters to purchase a Nabu Casa subscription or contribute code or other help to its open source projects.