Partners Canonical, openHAB Foundation and Azul Systems have collaborated hard to drive development of the new openHAB 2.0 smart-home platform as a snap package. An alternative to Apple Homekit and Samsung SmartThings, openHAB from openHAB Foundation is completely free and open source, and acts as a control hub for home IoT setups.

The platform is easy to install, highly customizable and comes with great performance across a wide range of hardware, from PCs to Raspberry Pis. Furthermore, openHAB can be used to control, automate and complement smart-home setups. As an open platform, openHAB is not tied to any single brand and supports many protocols and technologies, which enables consumers to mix and match devices.

Ubuntu's contribution to openHAB is snap, a secure universal Linux application format that makes applications available as a simple one-click download and install from the Ubuntu Appstore. The snap packaging of openHAB makes it simpler for home-automation creators to build, test and distribute their smart-home services.

Finally, Azul System's contribution to openHAB is Zulu Embedded Java Runtime, which is available for a wide range of hardware and provides optimal performance on home gateways, PCs or ARM-compatible devices. The sum of the partnership between openHAB, Ubuntu and Azul means openHAB can be packaged and distributed as a single application, including a tested Java Runtime, without click-through licenses.