Connectivity Standards Alliance
The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), formerly the Zigbee Alliance, is a group of companies that maintain and publish the Zigbee standard and the soon to be Matter standard.[1] The name Zigbee is a registered trademark of this group, and is not a single technical standard. The organization publishes application profiles that allow multiple OEM vendors to create interoperable products. The relationship between IEEE 802.15.4 and Zigbee[2] is similar to that between IEEE 802.11 and the Wi-Fi Alliance.
Over the years, the Alliance's membership has grown to over 500 companies, including the likes of Comcast, Ikea, Legrand, Samsung SmartThings, and Amazon.[3] The Zigbee Alliance has three levels of membership: adopter, participant, and promoter.[3] The adopter members are allowed access to completed Zigbee specifications and standards, and the participant members have voting rights, play a role in Zigbee development, and have early access to specifications and standards for product development.
The requirements for membership in the Zigbee Alliance cause problems for free-software developers because the annual fee conflicts with the GNU General Public Licence.[4] The requirements for developers to join the Zigbee Alliance also conflict with most other free-software licenses.[5] The Zigbee Alliance board of directors has been asked to make their license compatible with GPL, but refused.[6] Bluetooth has GPL-licensed implementations.[7]
As of May 11, 2021, the Zigbee Alliance has been rebranded to Connectivity Standards Alliance.[8]
Attribution
- Some content on this page may previously have appeared on Wikipedia.
References
- ↑ About the ZigBee Alliance. ZigBee.org. ZigBee Alliance.
- ↑ Wireless Sensor Networks Research Group. Sensor Networks (November 17, 2008).
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Our Members. ZigBee.org. Zigbee Alliance (August 13, 2014).
- ↑ FAQ for BEN WPAN. en.Qi-Hardware.com. Qi Hardware. “ZigBee is only royalty-free if not used for commercial purposes”
- ↑ Zigbee, Linux, and the GPL. Freak Labs.
- ↑ The Internet of Things becomes the Game of Thrones in standards war, The Register, May 21, 2015.
- ↑ Common questions. BlueZ Project.
- ↑ The Zigbee Alliance Rebrands as Connectivity Standards Alliance.