The licensing is a bit poor. While openthread is open source, and the spec is public: > "Membership in Thread Group is necessary to implement, practice, and ship Thread technology and Thread Group specifications."[1]. This seems to be a similar limitation to what prevents Zigbee from being in the Linux kernel, as commented elsewhere[2] in this thread.

In contrast, the Bluetooth SIG only requires a fee to be paid when you actually ship, as a once off not a yearly fee. The cost is roughly similar.

[1] https://www.threadgroup.org/ThreadSpec [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21825822

Openthread is purely a networking solution. It does not address application-layer messaging. This effort is to unify the application layer. (ie, "light = on" messages).

It looks like Connected Home over IP will be compatible with Thread - they are developing the stack on top of WiFi, Bluetooth and Thread: https://www.connectedhomeip.com/

Openthread uses the zigbee radio. Hence zigbee being involved.

On the surface this "appears" very similar.

EDIT: Yes I'm aware the software layer is different, I was inferring the radios are the same.