I know this is probably extremely eye rolling to read, but I looked at the store page, was quite interested, saw the "mobile app" and immediately had second thoughts because it just puts the device in e-waste when:
- You stop updating the app and my phone OS wont run it,
- My phone stops updating its OS and cant run the app, or
- The walled garden gates lock shut on you for whatever reason and I cant install the app, or
- You stop supporting my version of the display.
Is there any way to interact with the display without the companion app? Pushing raw bytes over the network is fine, just anything that doesn't require some phone.
In another eye rolling move, I also dont really consider a response of "we promise to opensource the companion app, or unlock the device if we go out of business" viable (what if you die unexpectedly?, or simply, dont care to follow through?).
But there is another dependency that you haven't mentioned: The device requires a running backend with an API.
At the moment, my only answer to that is: "I'll keep it running even if it becomes uneconomical and I will then also open-source everything.".
But I am also intending to add a way to completely avoid the backend, which will require users to render the data in a specific format to the device.
Supporting this is totally worth the effort for me. If only to put my own mind at ease a bit!
But, and there I have to be honest, I have limited resources to work on things. There are other features that I feel are very pressing as well. And so I cannot promise when I will find the time to implement this.
Honestly; a (?rest?) API to push content and trigger updates would potentially cause me to buy immediately if I can self host all the required parts. I've been trying to come up with a household GTD system for awhile now and i can see some clean integrations.
Why require a backend? Presumably, that means (in the best case) you end up handling credentials for unknown http end points. In the worst case, the backend sees the data being rendered, and now you have to deal with European and California data handling compliance.
What if the device had a mode to let people connect to an API via a lan connection? That would solve all the privacy issues I just mentioned, and also improve reliability when the internet is flaky. It would also solve the e-waste problem if your backend shuts down.
What do you think of configuring the device with a simple config file or even an sqlite database that is available via mass storage? Here I am taking inspiration from Kobo.
The config would point to the API that a user can deploy. Exposing more knobs through a config would be much easier than through a mobile app.
Overall, I am impressed with the device and the dev-friendly documentatio. I consider buying it. My use case would be to display weather and calendar - preferably together. The OAuth2 stuff is quite complex, so I appreciate that the company handles it on the backend.
>I also dont really consider a response of "we promise to opensource the companion app, or unlock the device if we go out of business" viable (what if you die unexpectedly?, or simply, dont care to follow through?).
If the promise is real, they should make it legally binding. If you go bankrupt, you lose control over your IP and quite possibly can't choose to follow through.
Although, even then, open-sourcing the app can be expensive (you need lawyers to confirm you actually have the rights to open-source all parts of the relevant code, and if there's something you can't open-source then you need devs to write a shim, identify the relevant keys that need to be published, and hopefully write some documentation.
Software used to come with source code escrow licenses (a long time ago). A third party would certify that you had done the due diligence you just mentioned up front.
I’d like to see legislation requiring this for any software that a physical device needs in order to work, but I doubt that will happen any time soon. (“Right to repair” is meaningless without something at least as strong as source code escrow)
- You stop updating the app and my phone OS wont run it,
- My phone stops updating its OS and cant run the app, or
- The walled garden gates lock shut on you for whatever reason and I cant install the app, or
- You stop supporting my version of the display.
Is there any way to interact with the display without the companion app? Pushing raw bytes over the network is fine, just anything that doesn't require some phone.
In another eye rolling move, I also dont really consider a response of "we promise to opensource the companion app, or unlock the device if we go out of business" viable (what if you die unexpectedly?, or simply, dont care to follow through?).