Meanwhile, the AllSeen Aliance was formed when Qualcomm open sourced AllJoyn and now has over 100 members. Qualcomm itself puts out a steady stream of products incorporating AllJoyn, and plans to make money from its open source framework in this way, and AllSeen is set to be part of Microsoft’s Windows 10.
The new Gateway Agent sees the group moving up the stack from its roots in discovery to the management of apps and devices. An extension of the AllJoyn framework, the Gateway Agent provides a common and secure remote access method for AllJoyn gadgets and apps to connect to the cloud, the internet, and other external services or personal area networks/device clusters. Interoperability is extended to a far wider range of external networks and remote services, by supporting protocol connectors that plug into a standard AllJoyn Gateway Agent API. This connector approach also enables connectivity, interaction and integration over a variety of protocols including REST, XMPP, MQTT and TR-069.
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) licence to their code, while AllSeen does not.
Developers who want to get involved with OIC can access RESTful-based APIs and submit code for peer review through the project’s Gerrit server.