About

FAQ

• What does this do?

  It makes more sense when you view it with the context you can find on Valetudo.cloud.

• Why does this exist?

  Because I - after many years - got a bit tired of maintaining the old Dustbuilder, and felt like it could greatly benefit from a rewrite.
  It also felt wrong to use Dennis' and my shared project to further my own strong opinions, as that is not what he had signed up for.
  
  I didn't do it there, but I can now do here, and that whole pile of friction is just gone.
  Additionally, it should give Dennis more space to hack on cool things, while the daily business doesn't end up on his plate anymore.. I hope.
  
  If you notice something that is broken or you're unhappy with, I am the guy to ping. Dennis has work to do.

• What's the authorship situation here?

  Hard to say, honestly. This is clearly my vision and work, but it also clearly could not exist without Dennis' vision and work.
  Frankly, it's the wrong question to ask, really, because this is not a competition.
  
  The internet just really likes playing Dennis against me when they're unhappy with my views and decisions, which I find deeply inhumane.
  Imagine hitting A over the head with his Friend B just because you don't like A. What a way to live.
  
  Anyway. These are two names, but the whole tech stack that got us up to this point has hundreds of thousands.

• What happens to the old dustbuilder?

  I dunno. Coexistence? Divergence? Maybe merging back together again in the future?
  Might also stay the canonical thing and this is just a playground. Who is to say.

• Why the name?

  Explaining jokes usually makes them worse, but, well. I took some inspiration from the vendor robot naming schemes.
  It means nothing. It's just opaque tokens. But it's kinda funny to me.

• Why is this a hosted service instead of something I can download?

  I know, right?
  You'd think that here of all places would be exactly that. And it would indeed have been that ca 6 years ago.
  (Un)fortunately though, I have lost the blind and naive optimism one has in their early 20s and have replaced it with optimistic goals, enforced pessimistically.
  
  Hence, the main reason behind it is - you've guessed it - control. Specifically, control over what happens how and when.
  And, as we have learned from the industry, the best way to do that is to cloud-tether your stuff - up until someone gets so pissed off by it that they rip out that tether just out of spite.
  
  
  But why control?
  
  Well, you see, this whole vacuum robot rooting business has always been existing in a weird and fragile balance, where the vendors kinda pretend that we don't exist, and we kinda don't fuck with their PR and business model.
  
  If you look at the history of things, vendors always locked down harder, every time we've released stuff with great fanfare.
  They don't actually want to do that, as it is work and it makes their life harder.
  And we also do not want them to do that, because we do like our rootable robots.
  
  The problem that now arises is when people wield this great power without great responsibility and force their hand.
  This can be shitting on them for 30 seconds of twitter fame, but it can also be trying to mess with their region locks or similar.
  
  I personally want as many people as possible to be able to have a fully local vacuum robot, but that goal is not reached through short-term emotion-driven activism but long-term boring and emotionally unsatisfying realpolitik.
  Something that is bound to fail the instant you throw this on GitHub as a turnkey solution for some naive guy to host and reap the short-term benefits while ignoring long-term systemic consequences.
  

• I don't trust you.

  That's good! You shouldn't. But seeing the source code doesn't change anything about that.
  You (technically) do have to review the artifact regardless, as any malicious stuff might be hiding anywhere - including beyond just the mere sourcecode of this.
  
  Really. There is so much cleverly evil shit one can do for hiding in plain sight. It's exciting and terrifying.

• But what if you die/lose interest/go crazy?

  Personally, I'd like to not do any of those things. But I can only influence that so much.
  Hence, strategically, it makes sense to multiply my leverage there by lining up your interests with mine.
  
  Which, spelled out bluntly means that if you want this to continue existing, don't be annoying and maybe help out shut down the people that are. Quite simple and quite effective.

• What's the contingency plan?

  Depends on the legal framework, but generally speaking "probably LLMs"?
  Nothing here is super arcane, so if I stop doing this, someone dedicated will be able to pick up where I left off from first principles (and inference) alone.
  That does require a certain level of merit though, which is kinda the point.
  
  Realistically, I will likely outlive the vacuum robot form factor, so, unless I fall terminally ill (mentally or physically), debate around is this is academic at best and a proxy war at worst.

• Why the negative vibes?

  Because people don't ask questions in these spaces to get a genuine answer.
  It's all just power struggles and politics.
  
  Not what I signed up for, but if one has to play these games, one can at least be good at them, eh?

  FWIW, Conway's law is real. The whole idea behind Valetudo and the space around it is merely a reflection of an above average need for control, stability, sanity and correctness.
  Which in part might be adulthood, in part might be the German soul, and in part might be how my brain is wired or got wired as some kind of trauma response.
  
  Interestingly, this might also be why people flock to this in the first place, and why then, inevitably and constantly, clashes happen, because you suddenly have two parties that both crave individual absolute control.
  I can offer empathy there, but I cannot offer yielding.

• Do you even like your users?

  Yes, very much so. Why do you think this exists at all?
  What does showing up daily putting in multiple hours also on weekends for 8 years imply other than "I deeply care"?
  
  They - or rather you - are "my people". Including many of our shared values, goals, ideas, and, also, dysfunctions.