Will Microsoft joining EEBUS finally bring us an open source reference implementation?
Earlier this month German EEBUS Initiative e.V. welcomed a very prominent new member: Microsoft.
If you haven’t heard about EEBUS, here is the core of the initiative’s mission in its own words:
“With a manufacturer-independent and standardized language, EEBUS is counteract the proprietary protocols with a global language for energy. One common language that every device and every platform can freely use — regardless of the manufacturer and technology. EEBUS is license free and can be implemented by anyone.” ( Source)
At grandcentrix, the German IoT and Smart Products engineering services provider which I co-founded, we have worked with market-leading companies like Viessmann, Miele, Gardena, Leica, V-Zug and many others on cross-vendor device communication and smart, connected services. Naturally, a global language for energy would have been vastly beneficial.
Our teams have looked into EEBUS and found it very promising. The biggest drawback and very likely the most significant obstacle to broader industry support: The lack of an independent, open source, royalty-free reference implementation.
I have personally been very vocal about this issue to a point, where I openly criticised the initiative for what I consider at least somewhat misleading marketing.
Here is a prime example: “EEBUS is license free and can be implemented by anyone.”While it is true, the standard specification is license free, there is no royalty-free implementation to date. In fact, the initiative’s 1st Chairman of the Board runs a company which lives off of selling a commercial implementation, a potential conflict of interest at the expense of broader adoption.
Welcome Microsoft.
Those of us, who have been in this industry for more than two decades, are probably still left stunned from time to time at Microsoft’s transformation as a company. Rarely any other global player has embraced the need for cross-platform thinking and the unlimited value of a tremendous partner play as the Redmond powerhouse.
My hope is, Microsoft will do to the EEBUS standard, what Google and Nordic Semiconductors helped doing for Thread: Create a completely open source, independent, publicly available, royalty-free and full EEBUS reference implementation.
Technically, our security analysts believe the standard as it currently stands will require some simplification and rethinking to make it compliant with Azure Sphere’s implementation of the The Seven Properties of Highly Secure Devices, but you have to start somewhere.
Having EEBUS available for Azure Sphere will benefit the entire industry — if it’s open source that is.
Given the endless reports about hackable devices, both home and industrial, a BSI certification on top of a freely available implementation could finally help EEBUS become a language, that actually “everyone” speaks.
With more than 50 members and now Microsoft, the EEBUS Initiative has the power to change the landscape. There has been no industry standard to date, that was born out of closed source, commercialized, governed code.
It’s time for a change.
Disclaimer: My company is a Microsoft Azure IoT and Azure Sphere Elite partner and has been a member of the EEBUS Initiative e.V. This article did initially appear on LinkedIn.
