A Case for Open Source in Automotive Embedded Systems

The role of Embedded systems is becoming more and more dominant in the Automotive segment. The proprietary products and Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products used for embedded systems development come with a huge price, which is a major concern for many automotive OEMs. Here, the perceived advantage of open source, compared to Proprietary products or COTS is that it is made available gratis or at a low cost. Many more such characteristics of open source produce a synergistic impact, and give a great deal of advantages to open source model. Proprietary products are often single sourced. When the source vanishes, the support and ability to fix defects also vanishes. Automotive embedded systems focus on increased system lifetime and lifecycles. So, the software and hardware tools obsolescence will pose a major problem. Hence, the adoption of open source in automotive embedded systems development will help in interoperability, supportability and reuse of software intensive systems to the next maturity level besides bringing down the cost of development. This paper presents the need for open source and the adoption of open source software and hardware in the V-Cycle methodology of embedded systems development in automotive industry. This paper also elaborates on the concerns with open source.