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Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

That's incorrect. Matter is an open standard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_(standard)

>the ability to commission a finished product into a Matter network in the field mandates certification and membership fees,[15][16] entailing both one-time, recurring, and per-product costs.[17] This is enforced using a public key infrastructure (PKI) and so-called device attestation certificates.[15]

Thank you for the clarification?

To be clear, this is the same organization that developed Zigbee, which requires paid certification - without, you're not allowed to say the product supports Zigbee or to use the Zigbee logo.

You can connect devices without this, it just shows a warning during commissioning that the device is not certified. No impact whatsoever.

So by analogy, Zigbee is like USB in that it encourages certification through trademarks, while Matter is like HDCP or Blu-ray in that it enforces certification through technical means (cryptographic signatures)?

> …while Matter is like HDCP or Blu-ray in that it enforces certification through technical means (cryptographic signatures)?

It doesn't even enforce that. You are free to use uncertified devices on your Matter network, as hobbyists making their own Matter devices can attest.

They both enforce certification for products, just that one is enforced through trademark and copyright law and the other cryptography.

In both cases can ignore certifications and have a working product. I run uncertified, open source Matter things myself.

It's not like HDCP in that HDCP is a technology no end-user wants, but something certain content creators want.

Matter is "open" in that it is published. It is not "open" in that you can make a matter device in your basement.

Here is the Silabs explainer on the certification process: https://docs.silabs.com/matter/latest/matter-certification/

> It is not "open" in that you can make a matter device in your basement.

You can! You just can't ship it/sell it without certification.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1adh8ah/esp3...

> It is not "open" in that you can make a matter device in your basement.

I did exactly that last week... Certification is required if you want to use the trademarked logo in your marketing materials (same as with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth afaik).

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