Internet of Things and Data Analytics Handbook

8INTERNET OF THINGS OPEN‐SOURCE SYSTEMS

SCOTT AMYX

Amyx McKinsey, San Francisco, CA, USA

8.1 INTRODUCTION

Open source will accelerate the innovation and adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT or Internet of Everything), fundamentally altering the way businesses, organizations, communities, and individuals interact and operate [1]. Since open source will have such a broad impact, it is important for innovators to have an understanding of the current open‐source projects available for use. This work briefly examines the background of open source, the motivation behind it, and the benefits of it. Using the results of an industry study, the importance of open source to the IoT is explored, and lists of consortiums and useful open‐source projects are provided.

8.2 BACKGROUND OF OPEN SOURCE

Sharing technological information is vital to advancement. The current state of sharing information is not new: Henry Ford successfully challenged the patent for the gasoline engine, which led to the creation of a partnership that would help distribute information throughout the burgeoning automotive industry. Open source is following in the grand tradition of free information sharing: it is free code (or economical) that performs a certain function. Learner and Tirole noted that the threat of lawsuits over the use of UNIX may have been a motivator in developing open‐source code [2]. The Open Source Initiative (OSI, founded in 1998) notes that code sharing has been an on‐going event, with its ...