I was excited to give Mycroft a try after reading about the new open source voice assistant online, but after installing Mycroft i just figured out on booting Mycroft that it ties into a backend called home.mycroft.ai for pairing ? why does my assistant have to be forced to use this pairing code, which truly I am not comfortable with a voice assistant phoning home or having to register a open source software, i don’t think i have come across any open source software that requires me to register unless its closed source, i went through your github at https://github.com/MycroftAI/ but could not find any reference to the backend “Home.mycroft.ai” used by Mycroft, so is this really an open source project ? If so how can i host my own backend on my own personal server or find code for the backend or how to completely disconnect Mycroft from calling home.mycroft.ai ?
This documentation gives a better understanding of home.mycroft.ai and why you should pair your Mycroft-device.
I am clearly not looking for documentation on Why To Pair, I am clearly in simple words asking Mycroft if they claim to be open source why isn’t the home backend open source and why can’t I setup my own personal server backend without me having to pair my device to their closed source backend ? Even their Kick starter campaign has claims about Open Source and no where on their website or campaign or repository it is clearly mentioned that Mycroft Backend is not Open Source, so indirectly a user is forced to used the proprietary closed Mycroft Backend without having the know how to hack on it.
On the phone, so can’t really copy&paste the corresponding docs, blogs and info but to answer your question.
- You can run Mycroft without the home.mycroft.ai option. You just need to create your own API keys for several services that some of the default skill are using. Insert those API’s into your full local config file and that should be it. The how to do that is somewhere in the docs.
- As you can see at the first point, this process is rather difficult for the average user. This is the reason, the home.mycroft.ai was launched. This is doing it all for you. So by simply “calling home” the whole configuration is done automagically.
- Mycroft AI is a software company and part of their business model will be that businesses can “buy” the service of home.mycroft.ai as server service. (Think; Car brands that are including Mycroft voice control in their cars, however want their own home.mycroft.ai server for their customers)
- Home.mycroft.ai in some easy form will be published a bit later in time. Published as in, the sourcecode will be available. It is somewhere in the blogs / roadmap.
Perhaps @KathyReid can give you the links to the different blog posts, documentation pages, etc. However I believe everyone is very busy getting 18.08 out of the door. So it might take a bit of time before she can jump in.
So in short: You can perfectly run without home.mycroft.ai. No the current version is not opensource. Yes, it will be opensource later in time.
Some efforts already by Jarbas to create his own backend;
(Nothing todo with above story btw)
I’ll jump in since yes, the dev talent is working hard on 18.08. The home.mycroft.ai backend is intended for aggregating APIs and managing devices, and as @j1nx stated, is the product that we’ll use to keep us in business. It offers usability benefits like faster and more accurate STT and TTS then has been available for even some of the savviest home-techies to deploy themselves. We work hard to earn and maintain the trust of our community and thousands see us as trustworthy and people of our word. Though you can, and as mentioned above, people do currently run Mycroft disconnected from the home.mycroft.ai backend.
That said, it has always been a goal to bring a self-hosted personal backend to the world for those who want or need that final bit of control over their system. You can find an overview and progress report on the Personal Server project in our recent Roadmap blog. There’s also some changes going in to 18.08 to prep for it. Look out later today for a blog post covering that.
Here’s the 18.08 blog, which talks about the cornerstone we’ve placed in preparation for the Personal Server.