Open Source Summit North America 2026 and Embedded Linux Conference brought together the open source community in Minneapolis from May 18-20, 2026.
As part of the Zephyr track, Kate Stewart and Hilary Carter from The Linux Foundation presented “Zephyr at 10 Years: Survey Feedback.” The session looked back at why Zephyr was created, how the project has grown over the past decade, and what RTOS users want the project to focus on in the years ahead.
Ten years ago, Zephyr set out to solve a problem many embedded teams quietly struggled with: how to build dependable real-time systems without being locked into a single vendor, toolchain, or proprietary stack. Before the project began, open source developers were surveyed to identify the key problems they wanted a new open source RTOS to solve, including security, safety certifications, and a well-integrated stack.
Kate Stewart opened the talk with a look back at the RTOS landscape in 2015 and the research that helped shape the launch of the Zephyr Project in 2016. From the beginning, the project aimed to be a true open source RTOS built around security, best practices, and open collaboration. What followed was a decade of steady growth: Zephyr expanded from five supported boards at launch to more than a thousand, while its technical stack evolved to support many of the communication technologies used in embedded products today.
Security and safety were major themes throughout the session. Kate explained that Zephyr established security practices early, including a security team, threat modeling, vulnerability handling, CVE numbering authority work, best practices compliance, SBOM generation, and ongoing preparation for requirements such as the Cyber Resilience Act. She also discussed the project’s work toward safety certification, including IEC 61508 and ISO 26262, with the goal of supporting use cases in regulated and safety-critical industries.
Hilary Carter then shared findings from Linux Foundation Research’s 10-year Zephyr survey. The research was designed to understand where Zephyr is being used in the embedded space, how it is meeting organizational needs, what is working well, what could improve, and what the community wants Zephyr to become over the next 10 years.
The study included a worldwide survey of RTOS users and interviews with members of the community. Survey participants represented a range of industries, company sizes, and regions, with developers making up the largest share of respondents.
Several findings stood out. Respondents expressed strong confidence in Zephyr’s maturity, production readiness, security posture, and ability to support long product lifecycles. The survey also highlighted Zephyr’s value in hardware portability, community and ecosystem support, faster product development cycles, and avoiding vendor lock-in.
The talk also showed how Zephyr is being used across a wide range of applications and platforms. Respondents reported improved hardware and board support, improved connectivity, and quality-related benefits such as documentation, reliability, and code quality. Zephyr usage was especially visible in areas such as industrial automation, consumer IoT, sensors, wearables, computing devices, and prototyping, while the speakers noted opportunities for continued growth in areas such as robotics, transportation, aerospace, drones, marine systems, and agriculture.
As Zephyr moves into its next decade, the survey gave the project a clearer view of what to prioritize next. Long-term maintenance and safety came through strongly, along with continued security updates, stability, documentation, onboarding, regional language support, training, and ecosystem growth. These insights will help guide discussions within the project as Zephyr moves into its next decade.
The session closed with thanks to the Zephyr developer community and project members whose contributions and support have helped Zephyr grow into a mature open source RTOS used in real-world products around the world.
As Zephyr celebrates 10 years, this talk provides both a reflection on the project’s origins and a look at the priorities shaping its future: portability, security, safety, collaboration, long-term maintainability, and a growing ecosystem for embedded products.
Watch the session here. Check out the OSS NA 2026 playlist here.