With the release of the preview version of IoTivity, we can cross the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) off of our list of industry bodies that teamed up and went quiet in 2014. IoTivity promises to be an open source framework for device middleware, aiming to enable automatic device identification to facilitate networking and communication. A reference version is due to be released by the middle of the year.
IoTivity is a Linux Foundation collaborative project, and is therefore governed by an independent steering committee that liaises with the OIC. It is currently accepting contributions and is open for all to work on – as is the nature of open source. In fact, it was this open source nature that caused Broadcom to quietly leave the OIC back in October – after which it was revealed that IP disputes over potential lawsuits and licensing spurred Broadcom’s exit.
“The ability for devices and machines to communicate will unleash a whole new world of technology innovation. Open source software and collaborative development are the building blocks to get us there,” said Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation.
But whether Broadcom shows up to litigate after IoTivity’s official launch remains to be seen, but for the other OIC members, the framework should prove extremely helpful for encouraging mass adoption of IoT tech. Mark Skarpness, the chair of the IoTivity steering committee has told Gigaom that devices that implement the standard and pass the certification process will appear in the second half of the year.
Founded by Atmel, Broadcom, Dell, Intel, Samsung and Wind River, the OIC’s membership hints heavily that this is a technology that will be embedded on the production lines of the chip foundries. With 3 major silicon manufacturers onboard at the beginning, the OIC later added more members to swell its ranks to over 50. From the silicon perspective, notable additions are MediaTek and Realtek, with other major players including Cisco, GE, HP, Siemens, CableLabs, Lenovo and Acer.
These members will be pushing for IoTivity to be installed in the silicon of all consumer and industrial devices, so that these things can talk to other things on their network or in their vicinity. This enables communication between and automation of self-identifying objects – to simplify the process of building networks and establishing architecture, in a manner comparable to plug-and-play functionality.
We’ve yet to see the output of the Industrial Internet Consortium, a rival alliance with similar end goals in mind, which shares a number of members with the OIC. The Qualcomm-founded AllSeen Alliance also has a number of members who participate in the OIC and IIC, but it has at least revealed its new Gateway Agent at CES and transitioned from device discovery up into the device management segment of the software stack (see separate piece).
Both AllSeen and IoTivity are hosted by the Linux Foundation, and so are overseen by independent steering groups, though their approach to IP licensing differs, perhaps betraying the different philosophies of Qualcomm and Intel in this area. The OIC insists that participating companies offer all members a zero-rate FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) license to their code, while AllSeen does not.
When the OIC launched last summer, the prominent backing of Intel inevitably sparked speculation that this would be a rival to the Qualcomm-led AllSeen Alliance. Its statements were too vague, however, to be clear that it would be a rival, not a complement, to AllSeen. But now it has released its first code, it is clear that the Intel-Qualcomm war has well and truly moved to the critical device discovery layer of the IoT.