Companies that shut down connected systems should be required to release all device and server source code and hardware electrical schematics. I don't care if it'll be useless to the average consumer, I don't care if it'll hurt their "sensitive intellectual property" (frantically cobbled dog shit) portfolios, but it'll make them think before they roll things out they don't actually intend to support literally forever...

> frantically-cobbled dog shit

And that's my suspicion about why open source often seems two steps behind: when it's in the open, you have to do it right and can't hide the bodies. Doing things right is hugely slower at first. It's only in the long run when doing it right pays off. Steady incremental progress outruns the FCDS junk when that inevitably reaps the whirlwind of the technical debt incurred during the initial breakneck development.

Sometimes the FCDS is a consultancy deal from the outset and you cannot maintain the steaming bowl of canine leavings in front of you at all. Ever wonder why every now and again a serviceable, but clunky and unmaintained shovelware-like app (parking, alarm system, transport ticketing, that kind of thing) gets replaced with one that's basically the same but a different icon and a handful of trimmed features? New consultants just got done frantically cobbling it from scratch. This is clear in the app landscape, but hardware is often a similar consultancy thing.

memefrog

Wait, wait, wait... Behind? If you'd asked me, I'd have said that's why open source always seems to be a step ahead! You're under no obligation to do things 'right', and worse is better. But free software means that you start from scratch much less often. You can take what already works and use it again and again in new products, and so can everyone else. Reusing the core of Linux in a billion small devices seems like a good idea to me.

adhesive_wombat

Open source is usually inferior at first, because it's often one guy, or a small group of people doing it after work and at weekends, not a big company piling gobs of money into a full-time team. You usually only get that initial rush in open source when it's a big company driving the project in the first place (LLVM, say).

Linux is one of the great examples where FOSS has built up momentum and outrun several commercial competitors. Ditto for git (which actually was a bit "FC" in the first place). GCC and LLVM have between them stomped a few commercial compilers.

If you want examples of open source lagging the commercial equivalent: FreeCAD Vs SolidWorks, KiCAD (which is beginning to edge out some competitors: Eagle just went down) vs Altium, GIMP Vs Photoshop, KDEnlive Vs Premiere, Octave Vs MATLAB.

Not to say they're not amazing projects, or that they don't have their own share of technical debt, but they'll all have to play the long game to reach the overtake (and they're all decades into the race, so it's a slog).

Not being into home automation myself, I can't really comment on open source in this space, but the commercial churn puts the FOSS approach in a good place for the software side. Hardware, not so much.

komali2

Freedom as in Beer is starting to mean a lot more to people now. That could be considered a major feature at this point. I started telling people about my jellyfin setup and suddenly "normie" friends that had no obsession with archiving and self deployment like I do are asking for help setting up their NAS and finding cool things to deploy in https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

This has always been the end game for me of open source, beyond all the other benefits: offer tools so good for free that when someone tries to charge people for it, they'll be met with a resounding "why would I pay you for that when I can get this for free?"

Not to mention open source software basically reigns supreme in Venezuela, India, Philippines, other places without high capital in global currencies.