The Open Home Foundation Wants a Legal Right to Choice in Your Smart Home

If you've owned smart home gear for a few years, you've probably had this happen. A device works fine, then a server shuts down or a firmware update lands, and something you paid for stops working the way it did.

The Open Home Foundation, the organization that supports open source projects like Home Assistant and ESPHome, published a position paper in October called "Choice in the smart home." It's short, it's pointed, and it asks lawmakers to do something about exactly that.

What the paper asks for

Their definition: choice "means being empowered to decide what's best for one's home and life." They say it "requires broad interoperability" and is "strengthened by open standards, open source hardware and software, and local control."

Then come the specific asks. Here are the four that matter most to anyone buying devices.

1. Devices should keep working without the internet. "Devices and systems should continue to work locally without arbitrary limits when blocked from accessing the internet or servers hosted outside the home." That's local control written as a requirement, not a feature.

2. No mandatory cloud accounts, even for setup. The paper calls for eliminating, where feasible, "any requirements for personal accounts on a third-party's servers—including for limited processes like device onboarding." That last part is pointed. Plenty of devices only need the cloud once, to get set up, and then you're tied to an account forever.

3. A right to tinker without permission. This is the boldest one. "A right should be established, and protected, allowing do-it-yourselfers, individuals generally, and all but the largest businesses to tinker with, improve, or extend the functionality of existing smart home products without first-party permission." The usual name for this is adversarial interoperability: making your device work with something its maker didn't plan for. Every community integration in Home Assistant that reverse-engineered a vendor's protocol lives in this space.

4. No removing features after you buy. "Manufacturers should not be allowed to permanently remove basic functionality via software, hardware, or firmware updates after product release."

Why the timing makes sense

The paper didn't come out of nowhere. The OHF's October newsletter, "How to take back your voice," describes Weber shutting down cloud servers for the June Oven, and says "Users have lost remote control, live camera viewing, and software updates." That's the fourth ask, in real life.

There's a smaller version of the same story on this site. TP-Link's recent Kasa security fix came with newer firmware that can cut off Home Assistant until you flip a "Third-Party Compatibility" toggle. Nobody removed a feature on purpose there, as far as anyone has shown. But it's exactly the kind of quiet change after purchase the paper is talking about.

Ownership changes are part of the backdrop too. The same newsletter addresses brands changing hands, saying that "As long as they continue to meet the program's requirements, Jasco, Shelly and Zooz devices will keep their Works with Home Assistant certification."

Two things I didn't expect

It isn't purist. "People who live in a smart home should not be compelled only to use products that are open source, based on open connectivity standards, or highly interoperable." I appreciate that. The OHF isn't telling you to throw out your Echo. It's saying the Echo shouldn't be able to stop working because a company decided so.

It calls for regulating certification programs, including its own. "'Works with' and other programs should be regulated so that they benefit users without being used as a means to arbitrarily restrict access or enact pay-to-play barriers." A footnote discloses: "The Open Home Foundation runs a Works with Home Assistant program." Naming yourself in your own policy ask is unusual. It makes the rest of the paper easier to take seriously.

Will it change anything?

On its own, no. A position paper isn't a law. The ask at the end is to "move forward drafting regulatory frameworks and laws to enshrine the right to choice in the smart home," and that's a long road. The OHF also has an obvious interest here, since its whole ecosystem depends on devices staying open.

But it's still useful today, as a buyer's checklist. Before I buy a device, these are the questions the paper suggests I should be asking:

• Does it work locally if the internet is down, or does it need the cloud for basic functions?
• Does setup require an account on the maker's servers?
• Is there a documented local API, or a community integration that's been stable for a while?
• What happened the last time this company changed ownership or shut down a service?

If a device can't answer those well, it might still be the right buy. Just go in knowing that the company can change the deal later. The paper's whole point is that, today, very little stops them.