Home Assistant, the Python IoT Hub

I'm not sure I agree with you portrayal of the project, at least when it comes to an F-Droid alternative client. Specifically you say the developer was intimidated, but it sounds much more like they just didn't have the time to work on it anymore when I looked briefly for information on this:

https://github.com/home-assistant/android/issues/42#issue...

I can appreciate the desire to be free of Google services, but I also don't think it's necessarily the responsibility of a project to agree. It doesn't make it less open source if the project leads aren't interested in maintaining an entirely different code branch of the mobile application (IMO). Since the Android app is open source, (https://github.com/home-assistant/android) there's little to nothing preventing someone else from maintaining a fork that doesn't require Google Play. I don't agree with the harsh criticisms of the project based on this, because I think fundamentally it boils down to an expectation they do work for free they don't want to do. That's never an obligation in an open source project and they aren't preventing others from doing it if they want to take that on (although obviously it would be an "unofficial" application).