ONVIF is announcing this week that it’s officially live on GitHub, an open source development platform. By having a repository on GitHub, the process of interface specification development is more accessible, transparent and streamlined. Open source is a trend that has proven to be successful in many ways for a variety of industries – here are three specific areas in which open source will help to promote the ONVIF mission of interoperability:
Increases software developer collaboration
While ONVIF interoperability specifications have a solid footing in the security industry, the transition to open source offers the ability to capitalize on opportunities in other sectors. This will provide a bridge between security technology and other ancillary systems that depend on standardization of data for interoperability. Among these organizations, open source has proven to be successful and the benefits of increased collaboration, additional transparency and new perspectives have allowed such institutions to thrive and grow. By adopting open source, developers and companies from industries that ONVIF hasn’t reached before, such as IoT, Artificial Intelligence and cloud services, will have the ability to provide input as part of the open source development process.
End users won’t have to be “loyal” to proprietary technology
As technology has developed over the years, the ability to access these developments has become increasingly difficult due to proprietary claims and lack of transparency. Open source combats this by making a piece of technology publicly available, where it can be shared and modified to fit specific use cases. This opens up the software market for developers and organizations to adopt and utilize open source – as it will never belong to just one individual or company. Collaboration among developers and organizations ultimately increases the opportunity for greater interoperability among systems and platforms, ensuring that users are not locked in with one manufacturer or device.
Flexible solutions for integrators
From a logistical standpoint, system integrators and end users will continue to use ONVIF conformant products to assemble solutions for customers and their own organizations. However, open source development platforms, such as GitHub, enable new developments to be brought to the marketplace more quickly and by external contributions. Integrators are free to customize solutions for the end user, who can pick and choose the technologies that will work best. The end result will be greater flexibility of interoperable solutions and a wider range of products that both system integrators and end users can benefit from.
Some additional technical information about the use of GitHub and other aspects of open source development can be found on our website here.
