French-based provider of open-standard contactless chip technologies INSIDE Contactless has made its Open NFC commercial-grade NFC protocol stack (formerly known as MicroRead Software Foundation) available in a free and open source edition under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

INSIDE’s Open NFC 3.4 is available now for WinCE 6.0 (compatible with Windows Mobile 7) and Linux 2.6 platforms, and an Android implementation is set to premier with the planned release of Open NFC 3.5 at the end of March 2010.

The Open NFC protocol stack aims to provide an NFC middleware solution for mobile phones, embedded products and other devices. Open NFC supports several levels of functionality, from low-level RF control to high-level NFC Forum tag handling, peer-to-peer communications as well as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi pairing, interactions with single-wire protocol SIMs and other secure elements and compatibility with smart cards and RFID tags based on FeliCa, Mifare and ISO 14443 standards.