http://www.techradar.com/pro/linux March 2020 LXF260 47Kate Stewart INTERVIEW
be in the 64-bit space initially. So people
are finding it useful for various purposes.
We’ve been keeping the community
aspect front and centre. Our Slack channel
has well over a thousand contributors in
it. And we’ve seen a tremendous number
of visitors to our website, and downloads
from GitHub and such.LXF: I visited your website this morning.
KS: Ah so you’re one of that numberthen. Thanks. We’re actually revising the
website in the coming months to make
certain areas more approachable. But the
community mostly interacts with Slack
and in the repo lists and such.
We’re having a hands-on session at
this conference actually, so people can
play with a Zephyr-powered board and
get basic communication sorted. Nordic
donated the boards for that.LXF: I’ve seen some Nordic
Semiconductor boards, they’re rather
cool. And they have funky names. I think
it was the Thingy:91 I was looking at.
KS: I wanted that one too, but for our
hands-on we have the Thingy:52. There’sactually lots of really cool products coming
out with the 91 soon. There’s one called
Anicare (see http://bit.ly/LXF260nordic),
which is an ear tag for reindeer and other
animals in Scandinavia. These are things
that you wouldn’t expect, but because
Zephyr’s built and designed for low-power
and long-life applications it’s ideal.
These tags go on the reindeer so they
can be tracked and geosensed. People can
see if they’re moving or not, and things likethat. The battery has to last a long time,
and it’s much better than the big collars
people used to use for tracking. Apparently
it makes sense for the hearders, because
if anything happens to the animals and
they can prove that it was something
natural like a wolf attack, then they get the
insurance. So that way they can see if it’s
worth doing the extra trek.
Another application has put devices
into boxes that are welded onto the side
of garbage trucks. Why? Well, these trucks
are meant to go to landfills. So the device
triggers when the driver dumps the cargo,
and sends a geolocation signal. This can
be of use to catch people that aren’t using
landfills – there’s a big problem with illegalBRINGING ZEPHYR TO REINDEER
“These tags go on the reindeer so they can
be tracked and geosensed. People can see
if they’re moving or not, and things like that.
The battery has to last a long time.”
ack in LXF247 we interviewed
the Zephyr Project’s Thea
Aldritch, where we learned
Zephyr is a tiny real-time
operating system (RTOS) that is
destined for great things. Zephyr is not
Linux, but that didn’t stop kernel don
Greg Kroah-Hartman, in our last issue,
describing it as one of his favourite Linux
Foundation projects.
Kate has had over 30 years’ experience
in the software world as a developer and
a manager. She’s also a key player in the
SPDX project, which aims to sort out code
licensing once and for all. She gives us
an update on what’s new with the Zephyr
project, and how it’s learning from Linux.Linux Format: Can you tell me about your
role at the Linux Foundation?
Kate Stewart: Well I’m the director of the
project board, so that means I interface
between the board and the technical
community. I work on strategy and try
and build relationships within various
parts of the ecosystem. I help to build the
ecosystem and try to make sure that any
problems that come up are addressed.
There are a lot of places I’d like
Zephyr to go this year. We just formed a
relationship with the Eclipse IoT people,
because they’ve got communication
stacks and protocols, but they needed a
good underlying RTOS to power them all- they had an open spot there. So finding
where we can be complementary and
reinforce other open source projects is
something we feel strongly about.
LXF: I met with Thea at the Open Source
Summit in 2018, and one of the things
that made the Zephyr Project so special
was the openness of the community. Can
you speak about that?KS: The community has continued to grow.
Right now we have about 550 developers
who have committed [code] to the GIT
repo. So people seem to enjoy working
with us, we’re getting a very positive
reaction and response. There’s growing
pains right now, a little bit anyway, but
that’s what happens when you’re growing.
We’ve got a fair amount of cool things
emerging into the repo, some things that
we really weren’t expecting. Last year we
added 64-bit RISC-V support (http://
bit.ly/LXF260risc), that was contributed
by Nicolas Pitre. And then last week the
OpenPOWER Foundation (see news LXF255)
contributed a port for the 64-bit POWER
Architecture. I wasn’t expecting Zephyr toB
4446March 2 h6r0789h08 March 2020 LXF260 47
Kate Stewart INTERVIEW
be in the 64-bit space initially. So people
are finding it useful for various purposes.
We’ve been keeping the community
aspect front and centre. Our Slack channel
has well over a thousand contributors in
it. And we’ve seen a tremendous number
of visitors to our website, and downloads
from GitHub and such.LXF: I visited your website this morning.
KS: Ah so you’re one of that numberthen. Thanks. We’re actually revising the
website in the coming months to make
certain areas more approachable. But the
community mostly interacts with Slack
and in the repo lists and such.
We’re having a hands-on session at
this conference actually, so people can
play with a Zephyr-powered board and
get basic communication sorted. Nordic
donated the boards for that.LXF: I’ve seen some Nordic
Semiconductor boards, they’re rather
cool. And they have funky names. I think
it was the Thingy:91 I was looking at.
KS: I wanted that one too, but for our
hands-on we have the Thingy:52. There’sactually lots of really cool products coming
out with the 91 soon. There’s one called
Anicare (see http://bit.ly/LXF260nordic),
which is an ear tag for reindeer and other
animals in Scandinavia. These are things
that you wouldn’t expect, but because
Zephyr’s built and designed for low-power
and long-life applications it’s ideal.
These tags go on the reindeer so they
can be tracked and geosensed. People can
see if they’re moving or not, and things likethat. The battery has to last a long time,
and it’s much better than the big collars
people used to use for tracking. Apparently
it makes sense for the hearders, because
if anything happens to the animals and
they can prove that it was something
natural like a wolf attack, then they get the
insurance. So that way they can see if it’s
worth doing the extra trek.
Another application has put devices
into boxes that are welded onto the side
of garbage trucks. Why? Well, these trucks
are meant to go to landfills. So the device
triggers when the driver dumps the cargo,
and sends a geolocation signal. This can
be of use to catch people that aren’t using
landfills – there’s a big problem with illegalBRINGING ZEPHYR TO REINDEER
“These tags go on the reindeer so they can
be tracked and geosensed. People can see
if they’re moving or not, and things like that.
The battery has to last a long time.”
ack in LXF247 we interviewed
the Zephyr Project’s Thea
Aldritch, where we learned
Zephyr is a tiny real-time
operatingsystem (RTOS) that is
destinedfor great things. Zephyr is not
Linux, but that didn’t stop kernel don
Greg Kroah-Hartman, in our last issue,
describing it as one of his favourite Linux
Foundation projects.
Kate has had over 30 years’ experience
in the software world as a developer and
a manager. She’s also a key player in the
SPDX project, which aims to sort out code
licensing once and for all. She gives us
an update on what’s new with the Zephyr
project, and how it’s learning from Linux.
Linux Format: Can you tell me about your
role at the Linux Foundation?
Kate Stewart: Well I’m the director of the
project board, so that means I interface
between the board and the technical
community. I work on strategy and try
and build relationships within various
parts of the ecosystem. I help to build the
ecosystem and try to make sure that any
problems that come up are addressed.
There are a lot of places I’d like
Zephyr to go this year. We just formed a
relationship with the Eclipse IoT people,
because they’ve got communication
stacks and protocols, but they needed a
good underlying RTOS to power them all
- they had an open spot there. So finding
where we can be complementary and
reinforce other open source projects is
something we feel strongly about.
LXF: I met with Thea at the Open Source
Summit in 2018, and one of the things
that made the Zephyr Project so special
was the openness of the community. Can
you speak about that?
KS: The community has continued to grow.
Right now we have about 550 developers
who have committed [code] to the GIT
repo. So people seem to enjoy working
with us, we’re getting a very positive
reaction and response. There’s growing
pains right now, a little bit anyway, but
that’s what happens when you’re growing.
We’ve got a fair amount of cool things
emerging into the repo, some things that
we really weren’t expecting. Last year we
added 64-bit RISC-V support (http://
bit.ly/LXF260risc), that was contributed
by Nicolas Pitre. And then last week the
OpenPOWER Foundation (see news LXF255)
contributed a port for the 64-bit POWER
Architecture. I wasn’t expecting Zephyr to
B