On February 1st and 2nd, the global open-source community gathered in Brussels, Belgium, for FOSDEM 2025 (opens new window), one of the largest events for the free and open-source software community. This year, the openHAB Foundation again hosted a booth, where a passionate team of developers and users spent the entire weekend showcasing openHAB and discussing the future of smart homes.

Booth team: Florian, Felix, Kai & Hans-Jörg

Open-Source at the Heart of Home Automation

Our booth was a hub for visitors curious about smart home solutions, and one message resonated strongly throughout the weekend: open-source solutions are more important than ever in home automation. As the smart home landscape becomes increasingly fragmented and dominated by proprietary ecosystems, platforms like openHAB offer a vital alternative.

By leveraging open-source, users can:

• Enable seamless communication between devices from different manufacturers.
• Retain full control of their smart homes without relying on cloud services, thereby protecting both their privacy and avoiding vendor lock-in.
• Benefit from the continuous innovation driven by our global community.
• Deeply adapt and customize their setup to fit their unique needs and preferences

Many conversations have shown, that the attendees of the booth recognize the benefits and importance of open-source solutions at the heart of their home, no matter which open-source platform is actually used. In the open-source community, it is important to understand that openHAB and other platforms are no competitors, but rather alternatives with their unique strengths.

Hot Topics

At the booth, we had discussions on a wide variety of popular topics, including:

• What is home automation?: Yes, even in 2025 people still ask that question.
• Matter: With a growing number of Matter-compatible devices on the market, interest in Matter is growing too. Especially newbies are highly interested in Matter for beginning with home automation, whereas experienced home automation users already have their devices at home and will probably start using Matter later.
• Energy Management and Monitoring: With the transition to a greener future and rising energy prices, energy management and monitoring are becoming increasingly popular. For example, openHAB users monitor their solar power plants with openHAB and control sur-plus EV charging.
• Technical Deep Dives: We also had a number of very detailed conversations about openHAB's architecture and tech stack, and common protocols such as KNX.
• How do we compare to Home Assistant?: This was the most frequently asked question at FOSDEM 2025, both from Home Assistant users and beginners. Most LLMs are able to compare them quite well, but anyway, here are some key differences:

	openHAB	Home Assistant
Tech Stack	Java & OSGi	Python
Driving Development	community only	commercial (Nabu Casa) & community
Automation Rules	UI-based, Blockly, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, etc.	UI-based
User Interfaces	Charts, Floor Plans, Maps, Tabbed Pages, Layouts (Blocks, Masonry, Grid, Canvas), declarative Sitemaps	Charts, Maps, Layouts (Sections, Masonry)
Cloud (notifications & remote-access)	free-to-use	monthly subscription
Ease-of-Use & Flexibility	more possibilities for advanced users	generally easier to use for beginners
Updates & Stability	well-tested stable releases in a half-year cycle	very frequent, but less tested updates

Looking Forward to FOSDEM 2026

We were inspired by the enthusiasm and engagement from the open-source community at FOSDEM 2025. As we look ahead to FOSDEM 2026, we would love to join forces with other open-source home automation communities — such as Home Assistant, ioBroker and other related projects — by hosting booths near each other to foster collaboration and strengthen ties within the open-source home automation community.

Thank You!

We would like to express our gratitude to you, the incredible openHAB community, all our users and developers. Without you, openHAB would not have become what it is today, and we want to let you know that many visitors of our booth acknowledge the work of the community!

A special thank-you goes to the FOSDEM organizers and volunteers, whose hard work and dedication made this impressive gathering of the open-source community possible. Their continued efforts are what make FOSDEM such a welcoming and inspiring event for the global open-source community.

We look forward to seeing you at future events and continuing to build a better, smarter home automation future together!