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Breaking News:
25.07.08 12:00
OSADL releases its first BSP Certificate
The BSP of Phytec's MPC5200 based CPU module certified to cohere to the OSADL BSP Specs.
24.07.08 12:00
Another Academic Member joins OSADL
The department of Control Engineering of the Czech Technical University is now with us
29.05.08 12:00
"Embedded Linux" is now officially maintained
David Woodhouse and Paul Gortmaker have volunteered to act as maintainers for "Embedded Linux". |
Open Source software components for the Automation Industry
- Need a Linux driver?
Once upon a time, a project manager ...
Project Manager: "We need to get someone to develop a Linux driver for our new machine controller. Here's a purchase order for the work."
Purchase Department: "Okay. Let me check the purchase order to make sure it follows our standard procedure: NDA to be executed, source going into company's safe ... "
Project Manager: "Nope, we're going with Open Source - source gets published to the Internet."
Purchase Department: "What? We're paying for the development but the source code goes out to the Internet? If everybody can use the source code, why are we the only ones paying for this? No way this can fly!"
The solution
Open Source is a way to get a broader community to help with development and to share in its costs. OSADL allows those members interested in developing particular Open Source software to come together in an OSADL project supported by membership fees. With the agreement of a majority of members, OSADL can delegate the development of Open Source software components. Thus, what is (financially) impossible for the individual (company), many (OSADL members) can do.
Current OSADL projects
- Implement realtime capabilities in the mainline Linux kernel
Realtime Linux Kernel - Prepare mechanisms to allow for the certification of the Linux kernel Safety Critical Linux
- Tweak existing off-tree drivers for inclusion into the mainline Linux kernel Upstream Submission
- Define minimal requirements of board support packages, install a testing laboratory and certify the conformance of computer boards with these requirements Board Support Packages
- Port the Xenomai Real-Time Framework for Linux to native Linux Xenomai/SOLO
- Provide a compatibility layer to use RTDM-based drivers under RT-Preempt RTDM-native
- Support the development of the kvm module in such a way that running a guest system does not interfere with the realtime capabilities of the host system Realtime-kvm
- Define a universal framework to access fieldbus devices from the application level FAPI
- Provide support for real-time Ethernet boards to the Linux kernel Real-time Ethernet
- Add realtime Linux support for Coldfire (68knommu) to RT-Preempt Coldfire
- Develop a stand-alone trigger generator and long-term digital time delay recorder and make it available on loan OSADL Latency Test Box