AllJoyn, Open Source & Qualcom: The Commons And The Internet Of Things

Think back, for a moment, on what the Internet is: a global system of networks, a vast commons on which modern communication relies. The Internet of Things will connect billions of devices, things that have to find each other across this commons and organize themselves into ad hoc networks for the purpose of the moment. These ad hoc networks can consist of a heterogeneous array of devices: different sizes and shapes, a variety of operating systems, and architectures with different roles to play.  Qualcomm realized that an excellent way to design and implement a scheme sufficiently flexible and robust is via open source.

AllJoyn is a peer-to-peer framework we developed to enable the Internet of Things. We’re smart in a lot of ways, but for something this flexible, this diverse, the smartest thing we could do is invite other smart people from all over the ‘Net to help us realize AllJoyn’s vision. Now sponsored by the AllSeen Alliance as an open source project of the Linux Foundation, AllJoyn benefits from the contributions of experts in a wide variety of techniques, disciplines, environments and platforms.

The New Era of Software Development

Years ago, a single organization could build a software system from the ground up and successfully introduce and maintain it over the long haul.  Those days are gone.  Today, the Internet is a vastly more complicated place than what it was at its beginnings, and software is now created in an entirely different way than it was written when companies like Qualcomm came into being, just a single generation ago.