The first SDV Community Days of 2025 are officially in the books – and what a fantastic way to kick off the Eclipse SDV year at the Lunatech offices in Rotterdam, Netherlands! As we work on releasing the recordings of the many exciting talks held on Day 1, we’ve put together a summary of some key highlights from our first community gathering of the year.
Hosted by Lunatech, the hybrid event began with a warm welcome and introductions from Sara Gallian of the Eclipse Foundation, as well as hosts Nicolas Leroux and Willem Jan Glerum from the hosting SDV member company. Setting the tone for the day, Nicolas and Willem highlighted key principles of open source – meritocracy, transparency, levelling playing fields, accessibility, among others – and emphasised the deep connection between open collaboration and innovation: “Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods and services”, Nicolas said, adding that “Not starting from scratch allows you to push innovation.” What better way to illustrate the catalytic role open source ecosystems play in driving innovation?
A packed schedule awaited, featuring thirteen talks and a panel discussion. Nevertheless, on-site and online attendance stayed strong throughout the day – and this was undoubtedly due to an engaging mix of new project presentations, project updates, interactive elements designed to engage online attendees, and – not to be underestimated – the great sense of humor and camaraderie that is characteristic of this growing community.
These Community Days showcased impressive project updates that demonstrated the progress of Eclipse SDV technologies, including orchestrator solutions Eclipse Pullpiri (presented by Xavier Punithan from LG Electronics) and Eclipse Symphony (presented by John Stenlake from Microsoft), as well as middleware communications technology Eclipse eCAL (presented by Felix Mölders and Lukas Heppel from d-fine and Florian Reimold from Continental).
The new projects that were presented are a testament to the wide range of technologies that have become part of the Eclipse SDV ecosystem in just its first three years of existence. Read on to discover some of them!
“Why do you trust software?”
Among the new projects and initiatives were presented on this day were the Eclipse Trustable Software Framework, Eclipse S-CORE, Eclipse SDV-LVL, the Automotive API Framework, and Eclipse LMOS (although the latter is not a project under the purview of Eclipse SDV, it was presented to the SDV community for the first time). In addition, the OpenHW Foundation joined an SDV Community Day for the first time.
The Trustable Software Framework is a project contributed by Eclipse SDV’s most recent strategic member Codethink. It was presented by Codethink Chairman Paul Sherwood, who opened his presentation with the simple, but – literally – existential question: “Why do you trust software?”, Using the Rust installation command line as an example, the point was made about how easily – and perhaps blindly – people place trust in software.
Paul proposed nothing short of a paradigm shift (in his own words, a “ridiculously ambitious attempt to change the world”, even beyond automotive and open source) in measuring risk in continuous delivery of safety-critical software. He argued that “safety” shouldn't be equated with “certifications,” noting that in a world defined by agile software development, increasing complexity, open source software, and non-deterministic hardware, safety should not be proprietary but transparent and open to the scrutiny of many, rather than just a select few. This is where the Trustable Software Framework comes into play. “The idea is: you provide evidence, and then someone who’s receiving the software can decide whether to trust it, based on the evidence,” Paul explained.
The Eclipse S-CORE presentation by Memsud Godinjak (BMW) and Markus Schu (Accenture), gave an update on the status of the ambitious new project whose goal is to “provide an open source software platform, code-based, for components with high safety requirements up to ASIL B” (Memsud). This includes a non-differentiating full-stack OSS distribution OSS, a software development process, a joint developer environment, and tooling. By providing these components, S-CORE can offer significant benefits, the speakers explained, such as development speed, resilience (since OSS is excluded from many regulatory roadblocks in North America and Europe), and quality by “controlling the vertical.” In addition, the project provides various advantages for various stakeholders in automotive:
According to the speakers, Eclipse S-CORE already boasts more than 300k lines of code contributed by seven member companies: Accenture, BMW, Bosch, ETAS, Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation, Qorix, and Use Blocks. It’s a great example of how OSS enables different parties to work together towards a common software stack, on top of which they can each provide their own differentiating services.
The morning and early afternoon presentations on Day 1, including Daniel Krippner’s talk on uProtocol and the Trustable Software Framework, helped shape the panel discussion held midway through the sessions. Safety and trustable software also remained central themes during the workshops on Community Day 2.
SDV Levels, APIs, GenAI, and Open Hardware
Eclipse SDV-LVL, which is based on the SDV level classification introduced last year by Dr. Moritz Neukirchner (Elektrobit), was presented by Moritz’s colleague Raul Latorre Fortes. Inspired by the six SAE levels for autonomous driving, the SDV levels aim to establish a clear taxonomy making transparent how “software-defined” a vehicle actually is – ranging from “software-enabled” (level 0) to “innovation platform” (level 5). As software-defined vehicles continue to conquer the market, having a clear conceptualisation and terminology in place is almost as essential as submitting lines of code.
The Automotive API Framework, a new project proposed by ZF and Vector and presented by Manuel Strobel (Vector), addresses the development and integration of microprocessor-based ECUs (Electronic Control Units). It aims to provide a unified approach (in Manuel’s terms, a “thin, modeled, and generated layer in the microprocessor stack”) to tackling app development and integration for various app supplier approaches and terminologies (AUTOSAR Adaptive App, ADAS App, C++ App). Notably, the framework also includes a complete workflow and corresponding tool to configure it.
One of the most surprising newcomers to an Eclipse SDV Community Day was Eclipse LMOS, introduced by Kai Kreuzer (Deutsche Telekom), one of the inventors of the open source smart home platform openHAB and formerly deeply involved in Eclipse IoT. His talk, including an impressive live demo, showcased how Generative AI can transform the automotive industry through an open source, (Kubernetes-based) cloud-native platform for building and running multi-agent systems. The so-called LMOS Protocol allows agents to discover one another and form a network that could eventually scale into an “Internet of Agents.” We all know that GenAI already revolutionises the rest of our (software-defined) world – now it’s time to explore how automotive companies can reap its benefits! If you've encountered Eclipse Autowrx or had the chance to speak with Dirk Slama, you may already have glimpsed the remarkable potential GenAI holds for prototyping.
Although not new per se, the OpenHW Foundation, represented by CEO Flo Wohlrab, provided insights into how open hardware and in particular RISC-V cores can be leveraged in the SDV ecosystem. The OpenHW Foundation, formerly OpenHW Group, only joined the Eclipse Foundation about six months ago.
From Presentation to Collaboration and Integration
What made the event stand out compared to previous Community Days is that many talks and discussions centered around integration and collaboration of projects. This also included discussions on how to integrate different layers of the software, RTOS and hardware automotive stack, as the OpenHW and ThreadX talks by Flo Wohlrab and Frédéric Desbiens demonstrated. Whereas previous community gatherings mainly focused on showcasing new individual technologies and recently launched projects, quite a few talks in Rotterdam featured more than one Eclipse SDV project – for example, Jan Jongen’s talk on Valtech’s successful integration of uProtocol and ThreadX, which was inspired by last year’s SDV Hackathon challenges; or Kai Hudalla’s presentation on integrating Eclipse Symphony and Eclipse uProtocol.
What’s clear from this year’s Q1 Community Days is that Eclipse SDV is not only expanding its scope, but also evolving into a more cohesive ecosystem. Projects are increasingly coming together, breaking down silos, and collaborating across layers of the automotive software stack – marking a significant step toward a more integrated and mature SDV landscape.
For some visual impressions of the SDV Community Days, check out our Flickr photo album.
