I think this is great but there are lessons here from desktop Linux, Facebook clones, etc, which is that retail is hard. In order to ship a widely used operati

I think this is great but there are lessons here from desktop Linux, Facebook clones, etc, which is that retail is hard. In order to ship a widely used operating system, you need a support infrastructure, consumer research, drivers for lots of hardware, warranties, marketing, payroll, operations, accountants, regulatory compliance. The product is almost the easiest part. I imagine that Nest understands all this. Putting a piece of hardware in someone’s house – one that’s connected to a furnace or which claims to protect against fire – means a lot of liabilities, broadly defined. I’d love to see an open source version get to that level of maturity and support. It does happen but it takes a lot of people. – (Tangent, but when I started at Stack, a lot of people said they could (and did) build a clone in a weekend. Sure, as an approximation of the technical product. But that ain’t the ‘retail’ product, which is actually comprised of community, goodwill, SEO, quality control, and a lot of other things.)