Welcome to theFoundation!

We are a non-profit organisation with the mission to educate the public about the possibilities and benefits of free and open smart home solutions.

More and more new technologies and devices are introduced to our living, working and business environment. Although all of them are designed to make our lives easier, we believe they have a common problem: The lack of interoperability, due to incompatible technology stacks and conflicting commercial interests. Market consolidation and cooperation between all stakeholders therefore remains a difficult challenge.

In our vision, system-wide, multi-vendor interoperability can only succeed if it is free from monetary interests. Free Software is the best option to boost innovation and to make smart home technology available for everybody. Furthermore, Free Software is irreplaceable for research and teaching.

Our Focus

Free Software

Free Software is free as in speech, not free as in beer. We believe that the software that builds the backbone of smart homes must not be closed or restricted, but that everybody must have the freedom to modify and enhance it. We therefore fully support and help to spread the ideal of Free software as proclaimed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

Smart Home

Smart Homes are our passion - and therefore we strive to make its benefits better known to the public and also to educate people about associated problems and risks. We specifically believe that smart homes must not mandatorily depend on cloud services, but should work offline as well. This not only assures the independency from the internet, but also addresses data privacy concerns.

openHAB

openHAB is one of the most popular open source software solutions for smart homes. It leaves full control and utmost flexibility to the user and is able to serve as an integration point for most smart home products on the market. It focuses on local integration, following the principle of an "Intranet of Things" and has a huge active community of users and developers

Our Services for the Public

Consultancy

We are running the openHAB Forum, where we answer questions and provide support.

Infrastructure & Marketing

We run the openHAB official website and maintain the build server.

Reference Documentation

As documentation is often scarce, we help on providing a detailed user reference.

Online Demo

We are operating an openHAB demo server, which gives an easy first impression of it.

Services

We are providing guidance and references when professional services are required.

Reference Apps & Plugins

We publish apps and plugins in various third-party app stores for reference.

Proof-of-Concepts

We are running myopenHAB.org to show case the openHAB Cloud features.

Events

Local events are the best way to spread the word - we help and provide speakers.

Blogging

Our members regularly blog about smart home topics to share their insights.

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