Open Source Summit is the premier event for open source developers and contributors. It’s where maintainers, technologists, and community leaders come together to share knowledge, collaborate on solutions, and push open source projects forward. It’s the home for code, community, and the people driving the future of open source.
A Cross-Domain Home for the Entire Open Source Ecosystem
Open Source Summit is not a single-focus, niche event, it’s the big tent that unites the full spectrum of open source technologies and communities. Whether you work in cloud infrastructure, Linux kernel development, AI/ML, embedded systems, DevOps, security, or safety-critical systems, Open Source Summit offers a shared space to exchange ideas, make connections, and learn across domains. It’s where technologists who don’t typically land in the same room get a chance to collaborate.
At the same time, Open Source Summit brings in the leaders and practitioners who support the ecosystem from non-technical angles: open source program office (OSPO) staff, legal experts, policy advocates, standards organizations, equity champions, community managers, and foundation leaders. Together, they help shape the frameworks, culture, and strategy that make open source work.
A Strategic Gathering for Open Source’s Future
This event serves as a strategic checkpoint for the open source movement. It’s where conversations happen about not only what’s being built, but how and why. From sustainability and funding models to licensing, AI alignment, security, and governance, Open Source Summit brings clarity and direction to a fast-changing open source landscape.
Whether you’re deep in code or focused on enabling the communities and structures that support it, this is where your work gains momentum and impact.
Why Attend
- Connect with the people shaping open source
- Learn from maintainers, developers and community leaders
- Discover emerging technologies and practical solutions you can use right away
- Collaborate on ideas and code that move projects forward
- Grow your skills, your network, and your career
Zephyr Track
The Zephyr track is for developers using or considering Zephyr in embedded products. Sessions will explore project advancements, security, tooling, and real-world applications across industries.
Session Highlights:
Zephyr at 10 Years: Survey Feedback – Kate Stewart, The Linux Foundation
Monday May 18, 2026 11:20am – 12:00pm CDT
Ten years ago, Zephyr set out to solve a problem that 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 beginning the project, open source developers were surveyed to identify the key problems they wanted to see a new open source RTOS to solve, such as security and safety certifications.
What followed over the next decade was more than steady adoption. Zephyr introduced a new model built around portability, adoption of security best practices, modern tooling, and a shared ecosystem of drivers and middleware. Contributors collaborate in the open to improve performance, connectivity, and reliability, enabling it to now be found embedded in products which need to last many years, if not decades.
As we head into our next 10 years, the Zephyr project reached out again to survey RTOS users and understand better what they value, and what the project should focus on improving in the years ahead. This talk will go through the results that the LF Research team has identified from the survey and interviews, giving a peak at the focus points going forward.
Turning the Ignition on Safety: Zephyr RTOS in Automotive Compliance – Saravanan Sekar, Linumiz
Monday May 18, 2026 1:30pm – 2:10pm CDT
Embedded Automotive RTOS (Real-Time Operating Systems) must meet stringent requirements for safety, reliability, and security, primarily governed by the ISO 26262 standard, which details ASIL (Automotive Safety Integrity Level) requirements.
This talk covers the Zephyr RTOS complies with key functional needs, including minimal latency, high determinism, efficient memory management, and robust multitasking capabilities to handle critical tasks. Currently, the project is actively moving toward greater alignment with the needs of the automotive industry, with specific plans outlined.
From Pre‑Silicon To Production: Firmware Development on Zephyr – Dev Bhaveshbhai Joshi, Qualcomm Technologies Inc.
Monday May 18, 2026 2:25pm – 3:05pm CDT
In this talk, the speaker will share how moving production PMIC firmware to Zephyr helped streamline development and validation workflows. Previously based on a proprietary RTOS that required maintaining a separate codebase for pre-silicon validation, the transition to Zephyr enabled the use of a single application codebase across the entire development flow.
The session will cover the development of a Zephyr-based pre-silicon PMIC testing platform, allowing the same application to run on both production hardware and pre-silicon environments using a different SoC (Raspberry Pi Pico) and a custom evaluation kit. The speaker will outline the software architecture, including Zephyr-based application design, device tree configurations, and Kconfig, as well as the hardware setup connecting the Pico to the PMIC evaluation kit. The use of Twister-based hardware-in-the-loop testing for validation will also be discussed.
The talk will conclude with insights into how Zephyr’s hardware support and tooling helped simplify workflows and reduce duplication across platforms.
Beyond Static Devicetrees: Implementing Runtime Hardware Dynamism in Zephyr – Wai-Hong Tam, Google
Monday May 18, 2026 3:35pm – 4:15pm CDT
Zephyr’s build-time configuration excels at efficiency, but challenges mass production. When a single product design needs to support dozens of hardware variations, e.g. swapping out sensors or chargers due to supply chain constraints, the standard build flow often leads to managing a unique binary for every combination. This creates a validation nightmare.
This talk presents an architectural framework used in the ChromeOS Embedded Controller that brings runtime adaptability to Zephyr, achieving Linux-like flexibility without the memory overhead of a live DTB parser.
We cover two specific patterns:
- Dynamic Driver Selection: We treat the Devicetree as a pool of supported components. By reading a configuration bitfield from manufacturing data (EEPROM or protected flash) at boot, the firmware dynamically initializes only the correct drivers for that specific unit.
- Safe Hardware Discovery: Zephyr compiles away hardware descriptions, leaving the host OS blind to connected peripherals. We introduce a pipeline that exports Devicetree definitions into a “Component Manifest”. This enables safe OS-level verification, avoiding the risks of “blind probing” on I2C buses.
Fuzzing Zephyr Apps – Struggles of Dynamic Analysis on Embedded Applications – Jayashree Srinivasan, Analog Devices
Monday May 18, 2026 4:30pm – 5:10pm CDT
Fuzzing, a type of dynamic analysis, is a testing method to find security flaws in software during execution. It involves providing randomized inputs to the application and observing for crashes.
Embedded applications present unique fuzzing challenges. Unlike general-purpose software, they run continuously in real-time without terminating, making it hard to use traditional fuzzing approaches. They receive inputs through specialized peripherals or direct memory/register accesses that require accurate modeling. Fuzzers must generate inputs satisfying highly constrained validation checks while maintaining application state, and crash detection is complicated by the lack of clear program termination.
Existing solutions use hardware, emulation, or rehosted systems with modeled peripherals, employing full source code level, binary-only or API-level fuzzing. Zephyr’s current libFuzzer integration targets unit-level API fuzzing but misses system-wide bugs. We aim to integrate AFL++, a popular fuzzing engine, to create a generalized fuzzing strategy across Zephyr’s supported platforms. Though still in development, we’re exploring the optimal approach to achieve this integration.
From FreeRTOS To Zephyr: A Practical Migration Guide for Embedded Developers – Jacob Beningo, Beningo Embedded Group
Monday May 18, 2026 5:25pm – 6:05pm CDT
FreeRTOS has long been the go-to RTOS for embedded developers. But as projects grow in complexity, demanding better modularity, richer middleware, and long-term maintainability, teams are turning to Zephyr. The migration, however, can feel daunting. Different APIs, build systems, configuration models, and abstractions create a steep learning curve.
This session delivers a practical, step-by-step guide for transitioning from FreeRTOS to Zephyr with confidence. We’ll map the similarities and differences between the two RTOSes, demonstrate migration strategies for tasks, queues, and synchronization primitives, and show how to translate existing FreeRTOS designs into Zephyr’s ecosystem — covering proven tips to avoid common pitfalls, validate your port, and leverage Zephyr’s strengths from device trees to vendor-neutral drivers.
Key Takeaways:
– Core architectural differences between FreeRTOS and Zephyr
– Migrating primitives (tasks, queues, semaphores, timers) to Zephyr equivalents
– Adapting build systems, configuration, and drivers
– Best practices for validating and testing migrated code
– Leveraging Zephyr’s ecosystem for scalability and long-term support