4 ms·

this is the kind of IOT hell i hate. sure you can open and close your power strip from anywhere in the world but when you FORCE the said power brick to first ta

this is the kind of IOT hell i hate. sure you can open and close your power strip from anywhere in the world but when you FORCE the said power brick to first talk to their server and then flip the switch, aka it wont work locally, that is the scummy kind of company that i refuse to give my money to.

cogman10 5y ago
I honestly don't understand why these companies aren't publishing their code for both firmware and server source. AFAIK, they aren't charging any money for this shit, so why not make it open source so, in the event you go out of business, your customers can figure out workarounds. Bonus point, you'll get security fixes for free.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  I agree that publishing the source would be positive for the consumer, but I can think of lots of (variably sensible/moral/legal) reasons why they wouldn't: - A public-facing codebase is a reflection of the company, and thus needs to be polished and maintained in a way that a private one doesn't. - You might have trade secrets in your code base that you don't want your competitors to have - Even without explicit secrets, your code base is a substantial investment that any competitor will need to make themselves in order to enter the market; publishing the code would give that to everyone (and let's not pretend that licensing terms and copyright will prevent a knock-off hardware manufacturer in a less cooperative country from reusing the code wholesale) - Alongside the free security fixes, you give adversaries more opportunity to look for, and exploit, flaws in your security. - The IP represented by the source code has a value that might well be a substantial part of your company's valuation, in which case you might need to sell it as part of an acquisition/bankruptcy proceeding. - (I am not accusing Insteon of this, but) if you publish your source code, you may expose all the 3rd-party code you are using/modifying whose license terms you may not be respecting.
- deleted 5y ago
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- jjeaff 5y ago
  Many offer upgraded options that they charge money for. But I think the main reason they like to do web based is to make the system easy to setup for remote access. 99% of their customers are not going to want to figure out how to open a port on their router so they can control it with an app while away. And then of course you have to deal with dynamic IP addresses and other edge cases.

cogman10 5y ago

I honestly don't understand why these companies aren't publishing their code for both firmware and server source. AFAIK, they aren't charging any money for this shit, so why not make it open source so, in the event you go out of business, your customers can figure out workarounds. Bonus point, you'll get security fixes for free.

InitialLastName 5y ago
I agree that publishing the source would be positive for the consumer, but I can think of lots of (variably sensible/moral/legal) reasons why they wouldn't: - A public-facing codebase is a reflection of the company, and thus needs to be polished and maintained in a way that a private one doesn't. - You might have trade secrets in your code base that you don't want your competitors to have - Even without explicit secrets, your code base is a substantial investment that any competitor will need to make themselves in order to enter the market; publishing the code would give that to everyone (and let's not pretend that licensing terms and copyright will prevent a knock-off hardware manufacturer in a less cooperative country from reusing the code wholesale) - Alongside the free security fixes, you give adversaries more opportunity to look for, and exploit, flaws in your security. - The IP represented by the source code has a value that might well be a substantial part of your company's valuation, in which case you might need to sell it as part of an acquisition/bankruptcy proceeding. - (I am not accusing Insteon of this, but) if you publish your source code, you may expose all the 3rd-party code you are using/modifying whose license terms you may not be respecting.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jjeaff 5y ago
Many offer upgraded options that they charge money for. But I think the main reason they like to do web based is to make the system easy to setup for remote access. 99% of their customers are not going to want to figure out how to open a port on their router so they can control it with an app while away. And then of course you have to deal with dynamic IP addresses and other edge cases.