To Matter --- OR not to Matter??

[KeithInAsia]

Is anyone else somewhat disturbed by the licensing and certification fees to be a part of the Matter ecosystem?

Espressif has been built on smaller vendors for a number of years, and now, only larger players are going to be able to absorb these thousands of dollars per year for the Matter fees.

Does anyone know what happens if you don't keep up with fees? Or can uncertified products be built, sold, and consumed by customers without the certification intact?

This is kind of big deal because Espressif is going to allow other mesh network alternatives to wither and die off -- (like the MDF)

Anyone have any valuable insights to this topic?

[Franco]

Hi Keith,
To my knowledge, Matter is license free, but the products must be Matter Certified to use the Matter logo. This is the same for Bluetooth, Zigbee and even Wi-Fi if the Yin-Yang Wi-Fi logo is used.
Matter Certification can be much simplified by using the ESP-ZeroCode for Matter modules or ESP-ZeroCode for Matter with Rainmaker modules because these have a fixed, Matter certified firmware.
More generally, using Matter or not depends on the use case of the application. If a company designs products in a closed environment, then Matter is not necessarily required, however if the device is potentially integrated in a wider ecosystem, starting from voice assistants, then Matter highly simplifies the design.
You have opened an interesting thread, I hope many others will shed their light on this matter, pun intended.

[vanBassum]

I agree, licensing makes it unsuitable for the hobby as well. Although, it's the only way they can enforce implementors to use the protocol as intended. This way they can assure products all work together, instead of some brand abusing the system for their own ecosystem that won't work with other brands.

So yes, it sucks for the implementor, but it's a good thing for the consumer.

[bidrohini]

Yeah. Matter is not yet suitable for hobbyists.

[xien551]

The arise of Matter reminds me of IEC61850, an Equipment interoperation communicaton proctol used for power system, a very Successful one.

IEC 61850 could makes the equimentment from different corporation works together, very important for the larger intelligent power substation. The popolur of IEC61850 is also the resluts of support from larger company such as ABB, Simens and so on.

Matter is a similar interoperation communicaton proctol but used in consumer market. And its development may depends on the following factors:

1. In the future, If there will be a very large IOT application where only one company is hard to affored the whole system. If not, the large company may intend to use their own proctol and exclude orther companies.

2. Will larger IT company such as Google, Apple, Facebook really wants to support Matter. If Matter is good enough, and better than these company's own procotols. Or re-devolope a better one is too time consumption or expensive.

At last, I think the the fate of Matter is in the hands of the big IT corporations.

[KeithInAsia]

Thanks for the input people...