The advantages of Free and Open Source Software are numerous, benefiting industry partners, individual contributors and the wider community who collaborate to advance state of the art. More than ever companies choose FOSS, however the world of safety is behind the curve. Software developed for safety applications often use old development practices and are closed source. Too commonly this code is seen as a competitive advantage, and having spent vast sums developing and analysing for safety, companies are reluctant to share their code. Ultimately this is to the detriment of everyone, and leaves us all vulnerable to unsafe software.

This workshop will start with a short presentation highlighting the benefits of Open Source Software for safety (both for consumers and the creators) and the biggest problems we’ve faced, and then lead an open discussion around the topic. We will ask important questions around how to solve some of the biggest technical challenges and we can convince industry to participate more in Open Source for their safety applications.