The board of directors of The Thread Group would like to comment on this week's introduction of OpenThread Released by Nest.

Most importantly, the Thread Group is very pleased that Nest is offering another option to implement Thread technology. To clarify, OpenThread Released by Nest is an open source implementation of the Thread protocol by Nest. There can be multi-implementations of Thread and, in fact, there are several already in the market from other companies like ARM, NXP and Silicon Labs.

We anticipate that this move will help drive further interest in Thread technology and membership.

Companies that decide to build products and solutions using OpenThread Released by Nest will need to join the Thread Group at the Contributor level or higher in order to complete the product certification process and ship Thread-certified products. Upon joining, members are granted access to the most current Thread Specification. In addition, Thread members enjoy RAND-RF (royalty free) IP usage rights.

As a general practice - and to be consistent with our objectivity as an industry alliance - our organization doesn't proactively endorse our members' implementations of Thread.

Again, we're excited to see Nest taking active steps to support the Thread Group's mission to create the best way to connect and control products in the home.