> There are standards, but every major smart home tech company wants to be the controller, not a slave. This is really the crux of the issue. First, from a bus

> There are standards, but every major smart home tech company wants to be the controller, not a slave. This is really the crux of the issue. First, from a business perspective, it makes sense: why sell a one-time hardware device when you can charge rent for its continued usage? From a consumer perspective, how can you justify buying a device that can’t operate without an ecosystem you have no knowledge about? This is why we need free and open standards of interoperability. It would benefit hardware businesses that now feel compelled to create an ecosystem when they’re only good at making hardware and consumers can buy devices and only need to check if it works with some standard like we do with WiFi now when selecting personal wireless devices. Maybe a bad example, considering the backwards compatibility of WiFi and the fact that there is only one practical set of wireless network connectivity transports.