On the point of Google and not being evil, I fully agree. Once you become a large company the 'Don't Be Evil' mantra only applies to your shareholders not your customers.

On the MS point ... Uh, I recall the early days and the geek culture wasn't in love with them (Bill's letter to the community didn't exactly endear him to the community, even if he was right). Later MS growth and gobbling up companies to quell competition really didn't endear him to the community.

As far as fanboys go, well they're fanboys about as useful as a religious zealot.

The odd this is that these devices (Traffic generators, Printers and other test equipment) weren't on the internet. They were on a protected lan. The problem was that someone brought an infected laptop onto the protected network and the infection started. It might not have been such a problem but the equipment wasn't even known to be Windows based and getting the vendor to 'fess up was a royal pain. Once we threatened them with a cancellation of the maintenance contract we were able to gain some headway.

Wireless may be acceptable but I also worry about it's use. Not so much due to DOS but rather just too many wireless devices.

I doubt we will ever see the switch/outlet/module for $10 and the reason would be the processor needed to handle the next request the identification of the 'class of service' (things like the risk factor). Something like UPnP would be needed and that will require some horsepower.

Currently there is A10, a slightly improved X10. Insteon and UPB are both power line and provide ACK/NACK to the protocol. With Insteon we lose virtual addressing from X10 (a device that doesn't exist but which commands are sent to). This is due to the linking requirements (kind of security). The X10 PLC patents have run out, I'm not sure of the wireless related patents.

What do you mean by abandoned? Sometimes software has reached its purpose and no further updates are needed. Of course this is not always true and some projects are truly abandoned.

Ah, my apologies, this was not clear from your first message. There are places where just making it 'just work' is acceptable. Those generally have a very low SAF. My wife keeps me honest and she is spoiled by the 'IT' support she gets at home. Any system that is installed in my home must be tested first. Same as with my network customers. Just dropping something into a working system without some form of pre-install testing is just asking for trouble. Bubble gum and bailing wire are not acceptable solutions. As to whether the system is open source or not. I doubt there is a single fully open source system in the world. I mix and match as needed. It's just that there are no Windows OS running on important systems. Heck running virus/trojan/adware checking software that eats more than half the systems resources is a terrible waste. And resolving mysterious outbreaks of virus/trojan/adware because some piece of hardware was running Windows (but the vendor didn't say so) is just unacceptable. I've lived through too much of that in my line of work. I won't have any of that in my home.

There seems to be a serious lack of faith in the farce. ;-)

BTW, I use my tools to automate my home, my lab work and to write a book (okay not a great one) on home automation.

Yes, I wasn't thinking when I selected the name! I still understand why nobody understand that HA is Home Automation, I mean what else could it be? (My apologies to the High Availability folks but I got there first :-) ).

Oh yeah, free software, take a look at Insteon software here (sorry I forgot). Yes it's my site and yes I really need to update it but I'm working on Insteon software.

Wow I'd say that at least 210% of the 'facts' in your message were pulled from a flying monkey's butt. You can not purchase and X10 kit for $10.

If you use X10 compatible modules (not made by X10) of similar quality to Insteon (the Smarthome Icon modules are pretty good) the costs are about the same but the reliability of Insteon is better.

While on the subject of X10 and reliability, X10 owners may want to take a look at the XTB (an X10 booster).

You can disassemble the Java and then recompile it to work from a PC. This would allow you to fix bugs and add features as needed. I've done it for one of my IP cameras that seem to only support some bastardized version of MS Java. In addition it was a bit buggy. The only issue I needed to resolve was the security because I wasn't running the Java code served from the camera. It still worked quite well.

The Insteon folks are an odd lot, the lawyer part is very much a pain to deal with (License) but the rest seem to have no problems with the open source community playing with the Insteon stuff. As has already been pointed out Misterhouse has had Insteon since about 2006. Gregg and the rest of the crew have done a good job with using Insteon. I'm using Insteon and Misterhouse right now. In addition it supports X10, Z-Wave (albeit in a limited fashion), UPB, EIB/KNX etc. So you can mix and match. In addition Misterhouse can add support for whatever a coder wants as long as they can figure out how to get to the information. Home automation is not just about devices, it's information too. I wish more people would understand that.

Well we're on the verge of a great many changes. The push for the smart grid has begun and no one knows which direction it will go in. There are a great many technologies that can be used in automating your home but a great many players have a vested interest in not playing nice. As such the OpenRemote was started to be the glue that pulls everything together. We currently working on great many things including Insteon, X10, KNX, IP and many of the other standard interfaces.

Actually Misterhouse is updated almost on a daily basis. The SVN version is the one being update. At some point in the year a point release is decided and then the over all number get incremented. I use Misterhouse on a daily basis.