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Actually they don't want to open source it. This is the result of a lawsuit.

The original idea of open source or rather free software is to bmactually "own" the code in a way that you can modify it to your needs. Guess this is not the case here, then. But I guess also most of android falls in that category that by now. I guess we should be using better,more attributes when describing open source

   you can disable this feature by going to Settings > Privacy > Smart TV Experience.

Samsung does that too and use it to sell you stuff, show you ads, and retarget you across devices! (Not saying it’s a good thing, but rather pointing out how common this is)

Yeahhhh I had to disconnect mine from the internet due to this (I don’t want a display ad on the menu screen when I turn on my TV like WTF, my TV just enshittified itself randomly with an update that added this a year or two ago). Which would be fine but you can’t change the TV menu tile layout if you are disconnected from the internet… Just incredible layers of design stupidity here.

Is this their dongles, TVs, or both?

That's also what I was wondering. What problems is this custom RTOS solving that all the other ones don't, or is it in fact just that some Roku engineers decided they needed some job security and having an OS nobody else uses would be a good path to that?

Brightscript could have been worse!

And much, much better, as well

Roku remotes are sophisticated devices. There are many models, so features vary, but among the possible features are 3.5mm audio output, Bluetooth audio, voice command input, Wi-Fi, infrared, battery charger and other things. Clearly a substantial MCU is present and thus, an RTOS.

You can do an IR remote without a RTOS, but as soon as you do BLE you realistically need a RTOS. You have timers for keep-alives, connection states, competing interrupts, CPU-"intensive" tasks that can be preempted (for crypto)

Voice command handling, I would suspect.

to spy on you

Not sure what exactly you are asking for, but check Jellyfin, it might be part of the answer.

I know it isn't FOSS, but I just plug a $500 Mac mini into my LG TV and use it with a wireless backlit keyboard/trackpad combo I got for $35 off the zon. IINA is a fantastic player. I rarely use the tv os.

Get an AI to transcribe the videos for you and then ask it to create a manual from the transcription.

From the front page of the site at least, no. This isn't for the Roku device itself (which is almost certainly running some flavour of Linux), its for peripherals like the remote control which will have much less powerful processors.

You can probably do it with a keyboard paired to a server/RPi that emits the keystrokes to the Roku ECP API, if having that second device is acceptable.

Rokus have a rest api that accept all the navigation and text inputs you'd do with the remote.

This might be possible now. I think the better option is having a hardware device that acts a bridge between a bluetooth keyboard and the Roku.

On my rokus, I am able to use my phone as a remote via the roku app. This includes typing on mobile via my phone's keyboard. Makes logging into things much easier.