Ambassadors – Page 3

Mar 01

ELISA at FOSDEM (Video)

By sremmert Ambassadors, Blog, Industry Conference

FOSDEM aka Free and Open Source Software Developers European Meeting is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized European event centered on free and open source software development that is aimed at developers. FOSDEM is held annually, usually during the first weekend of February, at the Université Libre de Bruxelles Solbosch campus in the southeast of Brussels, Belgium.

CNCF was an official sponsor and experts from various Linux Foundation projects came together to give keynotes and co-host devrooms including Embedded, Mobile & Automotive, Energy and SBOM.

In case you haven’t met the newly launched Linux Foundation Europe team, we invite you to read the latest blog “On the Road in February 2023.”

Philipp Ahmann, Chair of the ELISA Technical Steering Committee and Technical Business Development Manager at Robert Bosch GmbH, gave a presentation at FOSDEM titled, “The ELISA Project – Project insights and overview”. The lecture mainly focused on the goals and technical strategy of the project. It provided information about the different work groups, their interaction, and contributions.

ELISA members are working together to define and maintain a common set of tools and processes that can help companies demonstrate that a specific Linux-based system meets the necessary safety requirements for certification. These existing working groups focus on Linux Features for Safety-Critical Systems, Software Architecture, Open Source Engineering Process, Tool Investigation and Code Improvement. They are complemented by vertical use case working groups dealing with Automotive, Medical, and Aerospace.

During the talk, Philipp explained in detail about each working group. Safety Architecture group monitors the kernel for non safety related issues such as the watchdog kernel analysis and try to improve using tools and documentation and it is driven by use cases and demands of the products.

Linux features for safety critical systems group mainly work on the safety criticality part and not the generic features. The main goal is to look for the elements which could improve safety by doing incremental steps to make the system more dependable and robust.

While doing these processes, code quality is very important and hence the tool investigation and code improvement group. The WG uses tools and CI servers to identify the kernel issues and to make the kernel more reliable and robust.

Open Source Engineering Process WG was developed due to the challenges in Engineering. There are rigorous methods within kernel development. There is a strong demand from traditional project management when it comes to safety products. We can see that not every process compliance agrees with it directly. We need to find an equivalent to the open source development process compared to ISO 26262 requests for automotive products.

Systems work group works cross functional and cross projects and combine these elements involved in the above mentioned processes.

In order to tailor the systems accurately with these groups, ELISA Project has vertical use cases such as Aerospace, Automotive. Medical etc.

He also explains how ELISA Project is interacting with other communities such as Xen Project, Zephyr Project on safety critical topics, Automotive Grade Linux, SOAFEE and SDV on automotive use cases and Yocto project for build tooling and SBOM generation and SPDX for system SBOM data requirements.

In addition to the different work groups and their interactions Philipp also explained on the contributions of the different groups, use cases, used methodologies such as STPA and workload tracing and a status update on what to expect from ELISA Project.

As Philipp mentioned, based on George Bernard Shaw’s quote “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas” we need to get a good understanding and bring things together.

Watch Philipp’s talk here: https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/elisa/

We hope you enjoyed attending FOSDEM, met your friends👫 and colleagues and enjoyed the famous Belgium waffles🧇, fries🍟 and Beer🍻.

Jul 06

Lund Linux Con (Video)

By elisaproject Ambassadors, Blog

Recently, Philipp Ahmann, an ELISA Ambassador and member of the Technical Steering Committee and Technical Business Development Manager at Bosch, had the chance to speak at the Lund Linux Con about the technical strategy of the ELISA Project, the established work groups as well as the work of the Automotive Working Group.

The Lund Linux Con is a Linux Kernel focused conference in the south of Sweden, typically taking place in May every year. More than 100 participants attended the in person event sponsored by Axis Communications, Western Digital and Volvo Cars to meet and exchange about various Linux Kernel related topics. You can watch Philipp’s presentation below or check out his slides here:

If you’re like to learn more or watch other sessions from the conference, you can view the Youtube Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTIKt9flsc089GmCeR10mJLhqHbSC6mpi

#Lund #opensource #linuxkernel #functionalsafety #Linux

Feb 08

How can we make Linux functionally safe for automotive?

By elisaproject Ambassadors, Blog

Written by Jeffrey “Jefro” Osier-Mixon, ELISA Project Ambassador and member of the TSC and Senior Principal Community Architect at Red Hat

This blog originally ran on the Red Hat website. For more content like this, click here.

The automotive computing world, like many other industries, is going through a transformation. Traditionally discrete computing systems are becoming more integrated, with workloads consolidated into systems that look remarkably more like edge systems than embedded devices. The ideas driving this shift come from open source, but will Linux be part of this future, given that the existing standards for functional safety do not currently accommodate Linux-based operating systems?

Red Hat safety expert Gabriele Paoloni will present our safety methodology to the Automotive Linux Summit as an update to the presentation given at the recent ELISA Workshop. This methodology outlines the path Red Hat is taking toward creating an in-vehicle OS that incorporates modern ideas around workload orchestration, secure process isolation, and consolidation of mixed-criticality workloads, field-updatable and continuously certified for functional safety. We recognize that this is a huge task, but we believe it to be possible by adhering to these development pillars:

Open methodology development within ELISA
Participation in the ISO 26262 update process
Open code development within the CentOS Automotive SIG

ELISA (Enabling Linux in Safety Applications) is a vital part of the Linux universe, and it provides a community where those of us who care deeply about functional safety can address the challenges of certification and create solutions to resolve those challenges. ELISA is the cornerstone open source community for functional safety, and automotive is a big focus as the industry is clamoring for transformation and advanced computing facilities within the car. Red Hat recognizes that value and has emerged as a leader in the community.

ISO 26262 was originally developed in a time when automotive computing was managed through Electronic Control Units (ECUs), black boxes that had a deterministic output when given specific inputs. The standard is notably lacking support for pre-existing complex systems, including Linux. Red Hat is a member of an ongoing effort to update ISO 26262, known as ISO-PAS 8926, which has been accepted as a new working item proposal to the ISO committee.

Finally, Red Hat continues its commitment to work transparently as well as upstream first by forming an automotive special interest group (SIG) within CentOS. This Automotive SIG meets twice a month to collaboratively discuss automotive issues, including safety, and to produce a reference automotive OS based on CentOS Stream. We hope you will join us on this journey.

You can view Gabriele Paoloni’s “Functional Safety certification methodology for Red Hat In Vehicle OS” video from Automotive Linux Summit below.

Dec 20

ELISA Ambassador: Elana Copperman

By maemalynn Ambassador Spotlight, Ambassadors, Blog

ELISA Ambassadors are technical leaders who are passionate about the mission of the ELISA Project, recognized for their expertise in functional safety and linux kernel development, and willing to help others to learn about the community and how to contribute.

Each month, we’ll put a spotlight on an ELISA Ambassador. Today, we’re excited to highlight Elana Copperman, PhD, ELISA ambassador, Chair of the Linux Features for Safety-Critical Systems (LFSCS) Working Group and TSC voting member. Elana works as a System Safety Architect in Mobileye, an Intel company, designing features to support safety as well as security features in Mobileye vision products for the automotive domain.

Background Details:

As a System Safety Architect at Mobileye, Elana provides support for designing critical system features in Mobileye products, including system boot; drivers; and Linux infrastructure. Before working at Mobileye, she worked as a Security Architect for Cisco-Il (formerly NDS) and more recently as a security consultant for major European automotive concerns on behalf of various Israeli startups. Most recently, merging with safety constraints in the automotive domain, to deploy secure as well as safe systems. Her research interests focus on software engineering methodologies and security engineering.

Q&A

How long have you been active in open source?

I have been involved in “open source” before it was formalized as we know it today. During my time as an undergraduate student, online software source code was commonly shared as freeware. In fact, even early Unix versions were provided at no cost to academics, and collaborative efforts were supported to some degree.

My PhD research focused on Object-Oriented Programming, including some investigations on Java source code and features. Open source software development, Linux in particular, has evolved since then, including many new challenges and opportunities. For example, setting up and working with Apache Server over Linux OS in the early 1990’s.

Over the last 15 years, Linux has grown to what we know & love today, with its amazing powers. As a system architect, I have been designing systems that empower Linux in embedded systems, first in Set-Top Boxes (for digital broadcasting) and currently in Automotive.

Tell us about your favorite open source project and what problems did it aim to solve?

My favorite open source project focused on security code review with ST (chip vendor) engineers for the optee code, which had been released to Linaro. To see first-hand how open source aligns vendor, kernel and user requirements with features to resolve complex security challenges was mind-blowing.

How long have you been active in the ELISA Project?

I have been active in ELISA for more than 2 years, with active participation in each of the Workshops since joining. I have also presented talks related to Linux kernel features such as CRC pitfalls, eBPF verifier, isolation techniques, and kernel configurations related to safety.

What roles and/or working groups do you have or participate in?

I was the Chair of the Kernel Development Process Working Group, and am currently the new Linux Features for Safety-Critical Systems WG. I am learning from the safety experts on board, and my primary contribution is to represent the viewpoint of the application designers and developers who will build Linux-based safety critical systems.

Where do you see the ELISA Project in three years?

My dream for ELISA is to see a community of developers providing kernel modules which may be leveraged for use in safety critical systems. For example, a suite of memory protection mechanisms derived from well defined requirements that may be deployed to protect safety-critical data. Another example, which is in our planned agenda, are test suites for concurrency issues such as deadlock and race conditions, focusing on test plans derived from safety requirements.

What is the biggest strength of the ELISA community?

I think ELISA has matured since its early days and we are currently more structured in our analysis and goals. Our strength is in current efforts to progress and making real contributions to the Linux kernel community.

What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?

Never give up. Be flexible, adapt, adjust – but keep up the hard work.

What technology can you not live without? Why?

My home coffee machine. Drop in for a fresh cup and you will know why.

What part of the world do you live in? Why do you love where you live?

I live in Israel, a tiny multicultural nation at the junction of 3 continents (Europe, Asia, Africa). It has also become a major highway for birds – and a pilgrimage site for bird watchers. A wide variety of species can be viewed making their way south in the fall and back north in the spring. Thomas Krumenacker (German journalist and photographer) wrote a book on “Birds in the Holy Land”.

Now is a great time of year to take a trip to the Hula Valley Nature Reserve, to get a view of some of the estimated 500 million migrating birds passing over the Hula Valley and stopping by for a drink of water. This exemplifies the amazing diversity of the people and wildlife of our small fast-paced country.

What’s your favorite quote?

3 Fun facts:

My first computer was a PCJr, with 64 Kb of memory, and with virtually no hardware or software. I had to install all my own hardware add-ons and get it to work, including etching bit maps for the Hebrew alphabet in memory and getting it to work from right to left. After adding more and more components to the motherboard, one day it blew up. But I had a lot of fun with it until that happened.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IBM_PCB_Jr_Internal.jpg*

As a grad student at NYU, we had loads of fun playing with early internet protocols and collaboration tools, including gopher and kermit; getting our hands dirty (“finger”) working with each other’s systems; and Mosaic (an early Web browser). The crazy things we did over the internet taught me a lot about potential security issues related to networking. This expertise was the foundation for my more recent work in security and safety engineering.

As chair of the Computer Department at the Jerusalem College, we aimed high but with a low budget. Trying to keep up to date with educational (i.e., no support or documentation) versions of closed source software was a real challenge. I became adept at finding contacts working with major software vendors who were willing to break down the walls, expose the source code and support my customization for our needs. In a sense, challenging proprietary software in open-source development mode …

To learn more about ELISA ambassadors, please click here.

Oct 27

Welcome Jeffrey Osier-Mixon and John MacGregor as new ELISA Ambassadors!

By maemalynn Ambassadors, Announcement, Blog

Today, we announce two new ambassadors – Jeffrey Osier-Mixon, Principal Community Architect at Red Hat, and John MacGregor, a thought leader with several decades of experience in software technology. Learn more about Jeffrey and John below.

Jeffrey “Jefro” Osier-Mixon:

Jefro currently focuses on automotive efforts. As a community architect, Jefro is responsible for maintaining Red Hat’s relationship with automotive-oriented communities, and he acts as the current chair for the CentOS Automotive Special Interest Group.Jefro has worked in open source for nearly three decades, having started his career as a technical writer with Cygnus Support working on documentation for the GNU tools. He has worked with Wind River and Montavista/Cavium Networks on embedded operating systems, and spent five years at Transmeta. He switched careers in 2011 and went to Intel to serve as the community and program manager for the Yocto Project, where he was the board chair for 7 years. During that time, he also helped launch Zephyr and Project ACRN. Most recently, he spent two years at the Linux Foundation as a program manager for RISC-V International and LF Energy.Jefro has been on the program committee for the Embedded Linux Conference series since 2010, and he speaks regularly at open source conferences. It’s best to catch him after the coffee kicks in.

John MacGregor:

John is currently spicing up his retirement by participating in various ELISA working groups. He started his long career as a scientific programmer, switched to Unix programmer and system architect, then progressed to project manager in telecommunications. He worked for several decades as Senior Expert for Software Technology in the Corporate Research Division of Robert Bosch GmbH. Among other things, he worked on software process improvement, software reuse, automotive software architecture and IoT technologies. Before retiring, John participated in the SIL2LinuxMP project, which focused on certifying Linux under IEC 61508 at the SIL2 level, and then continued to contribute to the ELISA project.

John holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, specializing in operations research and information systems, as well as an MBA, specializing in marketing and finance.

Learn more about other ELISA Ambassadors here: https://elisa.tech/community/ambassadors/ Or, if you’re currently participating in the project and would like to become an ambassador, you can apply here.