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Comment by nwah1 | Hacker News Reader

HomeKit is not using open standards. Google and Nest are. Your question should be reversed. Why doesn't Apple just use OpenThread or one of the competing open source IoT frameworks?

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/11/google_open_sources...

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HomeKit was announced in June 2014, and released September 2014.

Thread was developed at Nest. The Thread Group was announced July 2014, far into HomeKit's R&D cycle. There wasn't much, or obvious, commercial support for for years. (Although to be fair, HomeKit has taken forever to get traction, too.)

I believe that at the time Apple was also concerned about the quality and security considerations of a Thread-like system. I can't prove or cite this, but having worked with Apple engineers who worked on MFi (ironically, I worked with them at Nest, not Apple), I'm skeptical of the narrative that it was devised as a revenue source. My sense from the culture of Apple when I was there (90s) and everything I see coming out of there more recently is that Apple tries to maintain standards of peripheral quality, security, and compatibility and that have been difficult to find in the Android ecosystem, say, although this has been detrimental in the case of HomeKit adoption and they've finally backed off.

Thread was developed in the Thread Group, and like any standardization body, was (and is) open for any company to join at a variety of membership levels.

All members had input in the specification, and subsequent specs.

Sweet. Where’s the link to the reference server implementation, and how do I point a nest thermostat at it instead of google? /s

You seem not to be aware that thread is a networking protocol, not an application protocol. Are you perhaps thinking of weave?

Edit: also, homekit uses either IP (usually WiFi) or Bluetooth LE. It's very different than thread.

https://nest.com/weave/

I know you're being sarcastic, but for folks who are actually interested, you can request access to the Thread 1.1.1 specification here [1], and you can contribute to Nest's open-source implementation of Thread here [2]

[1] - https://www.threadgroup.org/ThreadSpec [2] - https://github.com/openthread/openthread

Google open-sourcing their proprietary standard classifies it as an industry standard?

I think most home automation purists would provide a contrarian argument that points to z-wave or zigbee. :)

OpenThread is an open source implementation of Thread, which is an open standard based on 6LoWPAN with 802.15.4 for mesh networking.

Come on man. I don’t even need to link the xkdc comic but I will.

How do you force companies to play nice without regulation?

https://xkcd.com/927/

Nobody, you got that all wrong. 802.15.4 and 6LoWPAN are established, quite mature standards. HomeKit is the (proprietary) challenger, that adds nothing but an ecosystem for Apple to profit from

What about Thread and OpenThread? Zwave?

Edit: What about Zigbee? Google Home? WeMo? And new to me, Bluetooth Mesh.

Exactly, here I was thinking Zwave & Zigbee are the non-proprietary industry standard for wireless communication in home automation?

Zwave is proprietary. Zigbee is "not really" open. There is no open implementation AFAIK, the application library (cluster library) is standardized and everyone is allowed to develop and sell compatible devices, yet you won't be able to fetch the code and deploy on the platform of your choice, AFAIK. In this regard Zwave and Zigbee are quite similar.

Almost all the mentioned standards are based on IEEE 802.15.4.

The difference between 6LoWPAN and and the rest of the mentioned "standards": 6LoWPAN is IPv6 "adapted"/compatible. Thread is based/extends on 6LoWPAN, and adds several missing features or replaces some parts, because similar to conventional Internet devices, you need something more than IPv6 to get things going.

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