Linux Foundation debuts IoTivity open source project for IoT products and services

Linux Foundation

Linux Foundation is set to host developer collaboration for IoTivity, the open source project sponsored by the Open Interconnect Consortium to provide software framework offering connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT). The standard and the open source implementation will bring about interoperability among products and services regardless of maker and across multiple industries, including smart home, automotive, industrial automation, and healthcare.

Announced as a preview release, the open source software framework for IoTivity comes as a collaborative project and is set to allow interoperability between devices, products and services for the IoT. The project plans to release a reference implementation of the IoT standards being defined by the OIC, founded in July last year and currently includes over 50 members.

The Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC), with vendors across multiple industries such as automotive, consumer electronics, enterprise, healthcare, home automation, industrial and wearables, will define the connectivity requirements to improve interoperability between the billions of devices making up the IoT.

The OIC will deliver a specification, an open source implementation and a certification program ensuring interoperability regardless of form factor, operating system, service provider or transport technology creating a "Network of Everything".

The Linux Foundation hosts a variety of collaborative projects with an emphasis on code development. Open standards and specifications continue to play a fundamental role in software development, but common code bases are becoming the defacto way to accelerate innovation.

Open source software and collaborative development are the building blocks to get us there, said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. IoTivity is an exciting opportunity for the open source community to help advance this work.

Research firm, IDC expects the installed base of the IoT will be approximately 212 billion things globally by the end of 2020. This is expected to include 30.1 billion installed connected (autonomous) things. These devices are connecting to each other using multiple, and often incompatible approaches. The members of the Open Interconnect Consortium believe that in order to achieve this scale, the industry will need both the collaboration of the open source community and industry standards to drive interoperability of these devices.

As a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project, IoTivity is governed by an independent steering group that liaises with the OIC. The project is open to all and includes RESTful-based APIs. It is expected to be available in various programming languages for a variety of operating systems and hardware platforms.

The IoTivity project is licensed under the Apache License version 2.0.

Read this article:
Linux Foundation debuts IoTivity open source project for IoT products and services