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if it comes packaged as a service and you access a website, portal, or online content to use it, then you dont own it. Read the terms of service, because you likely dont own the data these devices collect either.
if thats the case, it can be leveraged by American law enforcement in routine investigation. That investigation can be triggered by something as simple as driving a nice car while black, or by downloading too many files. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Save yourself the heartache of finding out just how deep in bed these companies get with US law enforcement, and use FLOSS home automation. https://www.openhab.org/

OpenHAB

And several others.

Perhaps someone could design an interface that could bring all of those disparate standards together and hide them from the user!

Home security systems is a "problem" that has been completely solved in hardware. No DIY system, Linux or otherwise will compare in regards to available sensors, reliability, speed, battery backup, cellular backup, and more of a hardware panel. Many/most people want remote monitoring and thus pay for it. People ignore alarm sirens. What's the point of annoying your neighbors with noise while the crook takes his time packing your stuff into his van? You being on Slashdot means you'll want free, so I'll skip the subscription monitoring services.

DSC makes rock solid and inexpensive hardware systems. If you want to roll you own monitoring/alerting DSC systems can be integrated with other stuff including your own crappy and broken Linux implementable. You can also integrate a DCS panel with a home automation system like Vera or openHAB.

Home made security systems are not cost effective, reliable, effective, or worth the effort.

I've been looking at OpenHAB. It is pretty comprehensive and compatible with many current IoT protocols. Being OSS it's open to peer/security revue. I am hoping it or something like it will gain mass scale adoption.

If this is /. then shouldn't we at least be mentioning OSS solutions like OpenHAB in a discussion like this? Which is both open and agnostic.

The article is poorly written but there are some valid (and amusing / scary) points of view made. The author doesn't know what an OS is, clearly. But Hawkinson (the SmartThings guy) is right that there isn't going to be a one-size-fits all solution to home automation, there will have to be something to integrate disjoint subsystems. According to him, your system needs to be open to be fully useful, and I agree. However I am not sure that SmartThings is going in the right direction.

There's a few things to keep in mind in home automation:
- No vendor is ever going to manufacture and sell all the kinds of "connected" devices you will want. You're going to be mixing brands.
- The standard you pick will not be available on all your devices. When you choose an A/C unit, you don't want your choice to be limited by the HA standard it happens to support. Be prepared to deal with multiple HA protocols.
- No home automation vendor is going to write a driver or plugin for every conceivable device. And no equipment manufacturer is going to supply drivers for their products on every conceivable HA hub. Choose open systems with an active community

Open systems allow you to deal with these issues. One such is Vera (based on the proprietary Z-wave protocol), and its success is partly due to the fact that anyone can write and publish plugins for non Z-wave devices. Nest, Philips Hue lights, homebrew Arduino-based sensors, even your Ethernet capable Japanese massaging toilet are supported by Vera as native devices once a plugin for them is written. It's also a popular system because it isn't cloud based (there's a remote access capability through their servers, but it's optional). In TFA, that tool Dahlberg (of Arrayent) sees the cloud as the great solution to the integration and interoperability problem. Sure, I can see something like IFTTT acting as an integrator for different technologies, but I seriously don't want that stuff in the cloud, and I don't see a compelling reason for it to be there. Most serious HA enthusiasts are very wary of such developments.

I like the idea behind OpenHAB; they don't want to build yet another home automation hub, but be a "hub of hubs". In a reality where you are likely to have multiple HA systems and standards in your home, OpenHAB centralizes the intelligence and provides a unified interface, and uses the existing hubs as dumb communication channels. This is kind of what TFA was on about with their "OS for the home".

With 50 euro for a power supply, 100 for a sensor conditioning module (without the sensors!), 300 for a base station and 800 for a complete starter pack, I don't care if it is open source or not, it is way out of budget for the casual hobbyist. There are already enough different alternatives, most of which appear to be vapourware. Home automation seems easy enough that many people who follow the IoT hype start their own project. But we don't need more standards, we need less. The best would be if one of the existing protocols (not necessary that one) would win, so that people could mix and match their own components, which don't have to be more fancy than some arduinos and RPis thrown together.