Originally Posted by
TimothyH
Kind of an academic discussion but ANT+ is actually proprietary.
Proprietary has to do with property. ANT+ is entirely owned by Dynastream Innovations which is owned by Garmin. The protocol is their property to do with as they please. This is the definition of proprietary.
ANT+ is licensed. Some licenses such as evaluation use, are free. The owners of ANT+ however, charge fees to developers to implement ANT+ in software for revenue generating purposes, charge licensing fees to chip makers who put ANT+ on their chips and charge fees to certify devices and software. I'm also not an expert and only know the basics of how this works.
BTLE is open source but the fact that one or the other is open source vs proprietary doesn't make one better than the other apart from cost.
Interoperablity of either is not guaranteed. I could pay the licensing fee for ANT+ or download a software development kit for BTLE, write cruddy code, stick it on a device and sell it to cyclists all over the world. That's the nature of all software today and why I asked about Garmin GPS and Wahoo sensor interoperablity. I'd like to think that the two biggest players would interoperate well but it isn't a given and knowing that at least one other person does it sets my mind at ease.
-Tim-
Tim, thanks for that info. If I am understanding it correctly, it is indeed (as you wrote) "an academic discussion" in that there is the theory (BTLE and Ant+ compatibility
should be generic) and the practice (there
may be incompatibilities in practice).
I had assumed it was a standard like Dolby Noise Reduction, which was proprietary but widely licensed. (And if you are too young to have used cassette decks, you may have never heard of Dolby!)