How we are organized
The Open Home Foundation is a non-profit organization funded by
partner fees, and supported via non-financial resources like IT
infrastructure and employees dedicated to projects that align with
Open Home Foundation principles. It does not accept individual
donations.
Nabu Casa is the first, and currently only, partner of the Open Home
Foundation. (Future partners will have the same responsibilities.)
This newly defined relationship means the Open Home Foundation has
no obligations to Nabu Casa, and provides it no special benefits.
Funding and support flows in a single direction: from a partner to
the Open Home Foundation, and not vice versa. As a result, the
majority of Nabu Casa’s revenue goes towards supporting the Open
Home Foundation, and most of Nabu Casa’s 30 employees work full-time
on Open Home Foundation projects and external collabs.
The board of the Open Home Foundation, working with a partner,
determines how fees and non-financial resources are directed. For
instance, instead of a partner directly giving money beyond its
partner fee to the Open Home Foundation, the board may secure an
agreement for that partner to pay the full-time salary of someone
working on a critical smart home project. This includes projects not
owned by the Open Home Foundation, such as the open-source Z-Wave JS
library.
This example isn’t hypothetical. Read more
How you can support our work
Contribute to an open-source project
There’s no need to go through the Open Home Foundation to
contribute code, translations, designs, or
documentation
to any of our projects. Or even a project that isn’t ours—as long
as it is maintained in the service of smart home privacy, choice,
and sustainability.
Keep an eye out for our open calls for priority projects that need
extra help. Or support a maintainer’s work directly through a
GitHub sponsorship page, Ko-fi, or any other sponsorship platform.
Purchase something from our partner
Instead of a small donation, we encourage you to subscribe to Home Assistant Cloud, from Nabu Casa. Your subscription helps fund Nabu Casa’s partner fee, and pay the salaries of people working on Open Home Foundation projects and collaborations.
SubscribeGet in touch about collaborating
If you’re a large organization interested in making a significant donation to the Open Home Foundation, one of our projects, or in support of smart home privacy, choice, or sustainability—get in touch, and let’s see what we can do together.
Get in touchBoard members
We are driven by a set of ideas. Aiming to uphold Open Home Foundation ideals, support smart home projects, standards, drivers, and libraries—and secure the future of the open home for everyday users.
Paulus Schoutsen
President
Guy Sie
Secretary
Pascal Vizeli
Treasurer
J. Nick Koston
Member
FAQ
Why this structure, and why Switzerland?
How best to support the future of the open home was a question without a definitive answer. Our founders looked for inspiration from other organizations defending our digital rights. They eventually settled on moving ownership of projects to a non-profit Verein (“association”) that would be supported by for- and non-profit partners. For a low-overhead, international organization like ours, this structure represented the best chance to accomplish the foundation’s goals.
Our founding board chose to locate the Open Home Foundation in Switzerland because of the country’s strict adherence to the rule of law, long history supporting privacy and democracy, and fierce political independence. Switzerland is forward-looking when it comes to intellectual property, reverse-engineering, and the use of APIs for interoperability.
Are there other models, and other countries, which would have worked? Of course! But after long consideration we still believe these choices are the right ones to help us pull off this pretty radical, pretty idealistic project.
Does a partner profit when I buy something from them—even if all I care about is supporting the Open Home Foundation?
Yes. Absolutely.
This is one of the compromises involved in the structure we’ve chosen, the size of our organization, and the rules that pertain to how we are allowed to handle funding.
In the case of Nabu Casa, our inaugural partner, this isn’t a significant change from how things worked before the creation of the Open Home Foundation. It only formalizes the relationship.
(And hey, if you’re still not sure you want to support our for-profit partner to support us—don’t. Contribute directly to one of our projects, or a project that matches our smart home ideals—or yours! That’s totally in line with our ethos. This idea is bigger than just us. Or any single project.)
Is Nabu Casa’s relationship to the Open Home Foundation unique?
Mainly in terms of its track record.
Nabu Casa is a for-profit company. But since it was founded in 2018 by some of the same people involved with the Open Home Foundation, it has stewarded the cause of Home Assistant without commercializing the open-source project itself. For years, a significant portion of Nabu Casa’s revenue has been used to pay the salaries of people working on numerous open-source, open home-aligned projects.
What’s new is that the Open Home Foundation now officially owns Home Assistant. And Nabu Casa, as an Open Home Foundation partner, is required to contribute funding and non-financial resources to the foundation.
Will there be other partners?
Nabu Casa is the first partner of the Open Home Foundation, but hopefully not the last. We welcome other organizations with a proven track record, and a willingness to commit their resources, to consider partnering with the Open Home Foundation.