The IoTivity is an open source project. sponsored by the Open Connectivity Foundation, a group of technology companies such as Samsung Electronics and Intel who together will develop standard specifications, promote a set of interoperability guidelines, and provide a certification program to enable the Internet of Things. This project is independent from the OCF. Any individual or company can contribute to the project, and this may influence OCF standards indirectly. However, being a member of the OCF can benefit from patent cross-licensing protection. The IoTivity architectural goal is to create a new standard by which billions of wired and wireless devices will connect to each other and to the internet. The goal is an extensible and robust architecture that works for smart and thin devices. In October 2016 they announced AllJoyn merger into Iotivity. Also during the merging announcement, it was stated that current devices running either AllJoyn or Iotivity will be interoperable and backward compatible. The IoTivity will deliver an open source reference implementation of the OCF standard specifications but not limited to those requirements. The current release is 2.0 Previously, there was a 1.3.1 release for the IoTivity Framework. Within the merging process with AllJoyn, the project's licence is changed to Apache 2.0 Licence which makes it easier to other open source projects to include IoTivity and AllJoyn in more projects.
Overview
October 10th of 2016 AllSeen Alliance merged with the Open Connectivity Foundation under the OCF name and bylaws. OCF will now sponsor both the IoTivity and AllJoyn open source projects. Both projects will collaborate to support future versions of the OCF specification in a single IoTivity implementation that combines the best of both technologies into a unified solution. The newly merged groups announced that they will collaborate on future OCF specifications, as well as the IoTivity and AllJoyn open source projects, and current devices running on either AllJoyn or IoTivity solutions will be interoperable and backward-compatible. The expanded OCF board of directors will consist of executives from a wide array of leading companies: Electrolux, Arçelik A.S., ARRIS International plc, CableLabs, Canon, Cisco, GE Digital, Haier, Intel, LG Electronics, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Technicolor SA.
