Today, the Thread Group offers four membership tiers:

Academic

• Aimed at non-profit and academic research institutions.

Affiliate

• Aimed at those who want to simply keep an insider track on the pulse of Thread.

Contributor

• Aimed at those who want to implement and ship Thread technology and contribute to the future of Thread technology.

Sponsor

• Aimed at those who want to drive and influence the overall Thread Group organizational and technology strategy.

Having surveyed these membership tiers and listening to the feedback from both our current and prospective members, we recognize that there are benefits in restructuring the membership tiers, bringing additional value and options.

New Tier - Implementer

We are introducing the Implementer membership tier, available at $5,000/year, positioned between Affiliate and Contributor.

The Implementer tier recognizes that there are both current and potential members who prioritize shipping and productizing Thread technology at the lowest possible cost and with the least possible friction over contributing to the future of Thread technology through specification development.

The benefit highlights for this new membership tier are:

• Certify by Inheritance
  • Certify compliant Components and End Products, and utilize Thread certification logos - without ATL testing
• Access to IP
  • Gain Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) for Thread technology deployed in certified Components and Products, typically with no royalty payments
• Ability to Purchase Thread Test Bed
• Option to Purchase Thread Test Harness
• Participate in Member Meetings
  • Implementer track(s) only

Inheritance

While not a new concept, the reality of inheriting Thread certification from an upstream piece of the product development chain has become increasingly viable. In the October Member Meeting, we highlighted a scenario for Thread-based modules to inherit the certification of a certified Thread stack. Further development and understanding of OS/application layer implementation has extended the feasibility of Thread certification inheritance to the next stage—from certified Thread modules to end products—all the while ensuring that the Thread functionality is unchanged from the certified stack behavior.

In conjunction with the introduction of the new Implementer tier, certification of end products by inheritance facilitates broad and rapid adoption of Thread technology in complex product distribution models featuring multiple channels and high “fanout”.

Affiliates

In addition to adding the new Implementer tier, we also saw an opportunity to improve the value proposition of the Affiliate tier. As a result, we are pleased to offer that membership tier to new and renewing Affiliate members at $750/year.

These changes to our membership structure should be available April 30, 2019.