It’s definitely proprietary at the physical layer. You cannot make your own LoRa RF chips. It’s patented, closed-source, and owned by Semtech. There is no public specification.
However, the higher layers above physical are open and the proprietary radio chips are well-supported and widely available to hobbyists. There’s not much else in the low-power, low-cost, and no-license required to transmit niche, and it works really well at what it aims to do.
It’s definitely proprietary at the physical layer. You cannot make your own LoRa RF chips. It’s patented, closed-source, and owned by Semtech. There is no public specification.
However, the higher layers above physical are open and the proprietary radio chips are well-supported and widely available to hobbyists. There’s not much else in the low-power, low-cost, and no-license required to transmit niche, and it works really well at what it aims to do.