Relicense under an OSI approved license

JamieMagee commented 2 months ago

The current license of this package is a proprietary license^1. As a result, it is not compatible with the Open Source license, Apache 2.0, used by Home Assistant^2 and the Aladdin Connection integration is set to be removed from Home Assistant 2024.7.0^3.

You previously stated that you would have to re-start a discussion with your legal team about releasing the library under an OSI approved license^4. As a software developer that works in a large enterprise, I can empathise. However, you already signed the Contributor License Agreement^5 for the the code you contributed to Home Assistant Core, which released your contributions under the Apache 2.0 License^6. It shouldn't be too much of a stretch to release this library under the Apache 2.0 license as well. Nothing in this library is novel.

You previously committed to creating and maintaining an official Home Assistant integration when you sunset the old API^7. I assume you were aware of the requirements of contributing to Home Assistant when you made that commitment. So I am asking you to honor it.

shawngmc commented 1 month ago

Has any internal discussion occurred on this? This is a substantial blocker for home automation integrations.

Another option might be to make the API interface documentation public, at which point an Open Source-compliant implementation could be made with a reasonable expectation that the docs would be kept up to date.

JamieMagee commented 1 month ago

@shawngmc I reached out a couple of weeks ago, and received this response

Hi Jamie,

Thanks for reaching out. We are working internally with our legal team to adjust our license to be OSI compatible. As of now I do not have any updates other than we are still waiting on a response. We will make an announcement via Home Assistant once we have the issue resolved, and I will make sure to resolve the linked issue as well.

Thanks, Adam

norberttech commented 1 month ago

Any news on this? Its a shame that due to lack of understanding of how irrelevant and simple those 3 files are, home assistant integration had to be removed. Legal team that have "concerns" in this case should be fired, as they are working against the best interest of the company just saying "no" to whatever they don't understand...

whoiswes commented 3 weeks ago

Any news on this? Its a shame that due to lack of understanding of how irrelevant and simple those 3 files are, home assistant integration had to be removed. Legal team that have "concerns" in this case should be fired, as they are working against the best interest of the company just saying "no" to whatever they don't understand...

Yep, I've purchased 2 Genie openers in 10 years, and with the 2nd starting to act up already, another Genie is NOT on my list. This is just another reason why.

norberttech commented 3 weeks ago

yeah, we bought one just a month or two before it was removed from HA and that was THE ONLY reason to go with Genie. All because group of useless lawyers who only cares about charging more doesn't understand that there is NOTHING proprietary in this so called "sdk". Its a code that I can be written during morning coffee (if you drink espresso)

cbenard commented 3 weeks ago

+1 for needing this

nkiest commented 1 week ago

+1 as well. I bought a Genie because it was not a Chamberlain, and supported integrations. Then just a month or two later you broke the existing API. But said you would support it with a new API. But you apparently did not really mean "support", since you won't release some very boring code under an open source license.

Also, your existing license is basically directly contradicted by posting your code publicly on GitHub.

amar5150 commented 1 week ago

+1 this as well. The api in HA worked flawlessly for me and was used very often by my family. I have recommended Aladdin openers to others for this reason alone so its a shame that this feature was removed due to some legal wording.

cbenard commented 1 week ago

Any news on this? Its a shame that due to lack of understanding of how irrelevant and simple those 3 files are

Looking at it after your comment, I completely agree. Really hard to believe.

Do you know Python 3? I could fumble my way through it, but I'm wondering if I documented:

The very simple REST API
Request/response models
Authentication (just bearer auth header + api key header)
The SDK API (classes, models, functions)

Could you then write an API client for it that corresponds to those in a "clean room" way? I don't have any confidence their lawyers are going to be able to pull their heads from where they currently reside.

My other alternative is just to clone the code from the past commit and just use it, because I don't care if it's OSI-compliant for my own use, but I would hate to have normies locked out of it forever.

billvinson commented 1 week ago

Any updates would be appreciated. I bought 2 Aladdin Genie garage door openers purely based on the fact that they we interoperable with things like Home Assistant. Then it got removed with a promise to reissue it as an official intgration. I had assumed you all had just failed to keep that commitment as I had missed 2024.6 (reintroduction of the integration) & 2024.7 (removal of the integration due to non-compliant license).

Right now, my opinion of the company is still pretty low and I'm considering hardwiring a solution to ignore the "smart" part of the devices completely and work around the removed functionality. I'm hoping you all (the lawyers who likely made this license decision) can do the right thing soon and fix this. I'd like to go back to being able to recommend these devices to others, but that is completely impossible at the moment.

Genie-Garage / aladdin-python-sdk

Relicense under an OSI approved license #2