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Comment by wkat4242 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah and matter needs internet access in many cases. It was supposed to be the saviour of open home automation. But in practice it leaves too many strings attached that the manufacturer can take advantage of.

And despite it not being open enough for open source enthusiasts, it's also got a bad name with manufacturers. I work for one and I asked why we wouldn't implement matter and thread and it was laughed off because apparently marketing will never give up their own app as a data collection and cross selling vehicle. Of course those are exactly the reasons I don't want this.

I didn't even know about the certification that only big players can do and the locked firmware requirements. It's ridiculous. Why were thread and matter hailed as the open revolution when they're exactly the opposite?

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Matter doesn't need internet access, it's an entirely local protocol even when you integrate to other vendor ecosystems.

Now, something like Google Home might decide to go online to talk to a Google Home Hub device, which is where Google wants to initiate all Matter communication from, but that's a Google thing, not a Matter thing.

Technically Matter itself doesn't require Internet access, but you'll come across many devices that won't operate (or even join) without a functioning border router. What's in the spec and the lived experience are sort of different here.

A border router does not provide internet connectivity.

A border router is used to bridge e.g. Thread networks onto a regular IP network so that your non-Thread smartphone can talk to it, and so Matter devices on different network types can link up directly if you want a Thread switch to control a WiFi light for example.

Matter devices use link-local IPv6 addresses and cannot route packets onto the internet even if they wanted to.

But wouldn't the same issue apply to Zigbee in that case?

>Why were thread and matter hailed as the open revolution when they're exactly the opposite?

Subterfuge PR or the subversion of original intention by greed.

Also, wasn’t there recent news that thread was being abandoned by manufacturers, even declaring it EOL? Or am I conflating that with something else?

I remember an interview [1] with the Nanoleaf CEO (they switched to Thread over Matter years ahead of everyone else) about why Thread/Matter was so difficult, why everyone else didn't adopt it, and that they're going to wait for Thread to get better before they launch new products with it.

On the other hand, I believe all the major Thread Border Router manufacturers (Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung) have updated their Thread routers or committed to updating their Thread routers to Thread v1.4, which is a pretty major upgrade.

[1] https://matter-smarthome.de/en/interview/nanoleaf-ceo-gimmy-...

Yeah, doesn’t sound like EOL to me. Must have been some other IOT/PAN technology.

> Why were thread and matter hailed as the open revolution when they're exactly the opposite?

Because consumers are lazy and dumb, and do not do any kind of research. They believe what is written on the tin. Why is OpenAI called "open"?

Because people on hn think consumers don't have better things to do than to look up vague tech stacks they don't understand for their iot devices. The trick is that consumers don't have time to make an informed assessment because a consumer only has 24h in a day while a business has all the time to mess with the information.

As long as people keep claiming this asymmetry doesn't exist we will keep getting things like Thread

But it's not just consumers. I know the tech press hailed it as the end of manufacturer-specific closed systems, and so did some of the developers like the ones from Home Assistant.

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