This project is unmaintained

[nanoscopic]

It was taken closed-source over a year ago. The majority of all the issues were fixed / made into features in that version. Maybe it will be open-source in a year or two again, maybe it won't.

No community or group of people have submitted any PRs ( well only one PR was submitted ) in the last 2 years, so this really only serves as a demonstration of the sort of code that is now in the closed-source project.

When the website is completed for the closed-source project version information will be available at http://controlfloor.com There is nothing there at the moment.

If I were you, and you stumble upon this project, don't bother trying to use it. It's far out of date at this point, buggy, and not really worth attempting to get it working.

My company went through all that effort to remove the bugs and make it usable and work smoothly though, it's just not in our best interest to share it to the community as open-source at this time.

As it stands there is some poor support in DeviceFarmer / forks of DeviceFarmer for iOS. There are some other projects beginning to crop off with limited support. Daniel Paulus is also planning on making some rudimentary open source thing like this. If/when I see any open source project that does what this did/does I'll mention it here and update this.

So yeah. All I can say to those who care about this as an open source project is that you'll need to keep waiting.

[KostyaSha]

Hi, if this opensource state of your projects is working somehow now (i mean it could be setup and used), would you be able to accept contributions?

[nanoscopic]

It is possible, yes, to make this last open source version of the product work. I do not though, as I've stated above, believe it is worth trying to do. I am certainly fine with people continuing to do so and will be happy to accept contributions to it to allow it to live on in a truly free form.

I will though give you all an update on what is going on. Bear with me as this requires some amount of explaining why the updated product is not yet available on the open market.

I originally developed the precursor to ControlFloor when working for TMobile. This is why in my video about the development of a device farm I mention and thank them. They graciously allowed me to make all my work there open source. During that time, I was hired on the side for Company X, who I shall refer to as Bigco.

Bigco wanted to have support for the open source project I wrote at TMobile. Unfortunately corporate rules and regulations at TMobile made it impossible for me to make the product work well. Additionally that initial product was a modification to STF, and STF has serious limitations and flaws.

After some time I left TMobile, and decided to rewrite the software completely so that it could be done properly, and also be owned by my own company, Dry Ark LLC. After creating the newer better product, which is this repo and its associated components, ControlFloor, I talked to Bigco and told them they are free to use it internally as long as:

1. They only use it internally and don't resell it as a service
2. They agree that I own and will retain all copyright and ownership to ControlFloor, which changes the terms under which they initially hired me ( as initial contract said work for hire )

My contact at Bigco certified that he agreed to this. I asked for it in writing and he refused. You can likely imagine where this is going.

A year went by with me providing support to Bigco to use ControlFloor. My contract with Bigco came up for renewal. The renewal contract repeated work-for-hire terms which were not compatible with the verbal agreements that I own ControlFloor. I refused to sign as a result, demanding they put the verbal agreements into writing as well. They still refused to do so. My contact at Bigco once again certified that Dry Ark LLC does own ControlFloor and there is no issue.

During all this LambdaTest became a client of Dry Ark LLC and integrated ControlFloor into their offering. They paid for support for a while and then suddenly stopped. I asked why and they said they weren't using it any more. I objected, as it was clear that what they did was study ControlFloor source code and duplicate it in a slightly different way. They capitulated and agreed to and did pay residual licensing for some time. I appreciate that they understood what they did wasn't right, and that they made it right by doing this. As a result, I respect LambdaTest and their offering despite what happened.

After that situation happened with LambdaTest, I decided to further protect Dry Ark LLC intellectual property. I took ControlFloor closed source, and ceased to provide any source code to Bigco, to prevent them from attempting to steal it by stealing the ideas and then ceasing to pay support.

My contract with Bigco came up for renewal again. The whole nonsense happened again. I refused to sign. They refused to put the verbal agreements in writing. I bitched about it. Things just continued on as is.

Bigco started demanding that I somehow magically make more of their users internally use ControlFloor. I cannot do this. My company is capable of building a great product, but we cannot alter the internal policies or methods of a company as an outside company developing our product. Bigco still demanded it or they would cease to support ControlFloor.

Being pressured to do the impossible, myself and my company put in extra hours to attempt to do what Bigco demanded. I was short with a Bigco employee in an attempt to get them to do what was necessary so that their users would actually begin using the product. I apologized, and explained that I am neurodiverse and that it is best if someone else from Dry Ark speak with their employees rather than me, the CTO, as I tend to be quite aggressive. That is, I asked for accommodation as a neurodiverse individual in an attempt to avoid offending any more Bigco employees.

Instead of being accommodating, Bigco terminated the contract with my company early. They then claimed that they own ControlFloor as a work-for-hire. That is obviously total bullshit and I have been arguing with them ever since.

Bigco has essentially capitulated and is agreeing to do the following:

1. Sign over all the rights/copyright to ControlFloor to Dry Ark LLC ( which makes no sense since they don't own it but whatever )
2. Pay a settlement amount for wrongful termination and violating the ADA by not providing accommodation.

They are agreeing to this in exchange for:

1. NDA and non-disparagement. They don't want me to tell the world that they are shitheads, which they are.
2. Giving them "rights" to ControlFloor, but they claim they will never use them in any way except to defend themselves
3. Agreement not to sue them

It has been 3 months of back and forth with mangers/lawyers at Bigco. Until this crap is resolved I unfortunately cannot safely continue doing anything with the ControlFloor IP.

I do rightfully own it under the terms of the verbal agreements they made with me, but since they are a huge company and have piles of money and lawyers, it remains unsafe for me to proceed till I have it in writing that they'll leave me the fuck alone.

Finally Bigco has not even paid for the last month of work and support my company did for them, far past the NET30 terms of payment they agreed to.

Supposing Bigco actually makes this right somehow, I will be offering the latest and greatest version of ControlFloor at a cheap license cost to whoever wants it and continuing development of it. For the time being we all have to wait for the mighty dipshit Bigco to finish forcing me to sign bullshit in order to get what is rightfully mine.

Edit: Minor correction to grammar.

[nabuah]

Hi,

Any recent developments with the Bigco situation?