 So we're here at the Linaro Connect, and who are you? Hi, my name is Thea Aldrich, I'm the developer at Evangelist and advocate for the Zephyr project. So, Zephyr is pretty cool, right? Yes. So, is it the future of IoT? You know, I think it would, that's a, that's a hard question. I think, you know, predictions are always difficult. I think that Zephyr has a really great opportunity to have a profound impact on the IoT ecosystem. So I would say, I certainly hope and expect that it will be a large part of the future of IoT. And already a lot of companies are collaborating, for example Intel and ARM are collaborating and a whole bunch of other companies, and they're working very hard, right? Some things, for example right here in behind, we had the Linaro Connect and there's some collaboration going on. Yeah, so it's really exciting time within the Zephyr community. All of the indicators of community growth are really strong. We're up to about 325 contributors from more than 15 companies. And so while the project is still relatively young within the RTOS space, when you look at the number of developers, the number of companies, and the number of outside organizations that are using and contributing to Zephyr in unique and interesting ways, it's a really exciting project to be part of right now. So have you, you've, what's it called, promoted, evangelized open collaborative projects before, right? So how does Zephyr, what's it called, how is it special? So one of the things that I love about the Zephyr project, you know, there's not a lot of brand new mind-blowing innovations that are going to happen in the RTOS space. What is unique about the Zephyr project is really the implementation of best practices for open source that's letting the project see the full benefit of the collaboration of having so many different voices and so many different perspectives at the table. So it's kind of the Linux for the embedded world? So it's, right, is that kind of the positioning right here? So well, I think it's always important to distinguish when people say that we're the, you know, the Linux of the embedded world, we're actually not based off of Linux. We're specifically targeting places where Linux is too big. So, you know, embedded in IoT are such generic terms that I think that for Zephyr we're really hyper-focused on being the RTOS of choice when a Linux is too big. But it's got to have a whole bunch of things that people are saying, that takes all the boxes because people are getting excited and totally involved in it. So there's got to be something that's really happening that's the right thing. I think so, and I think a lot of it really centers back to things like governance under the Linux foundation but also the strength and commitment of our members and the developers working on it. You know, open-source projects are always only as strong as their communities and so any success for Zephyr is really a direct result of the work of the community. So what kind of work do you do in evangelizing it? So are you going to some events? Yeah, so I have the honor of being the evangelist for the Zephyr project and I came to the Zephyr project as a user, as a hobbyist. And so the idea that there was even room for non-technical contributions to be really seriously valued was such a benefit to me and so we do a number of speaking and promotional events. But we also are, you know, a large part of my job is going out and talking directly to the developers, finding out what they're worried about, what they're interested in and making sure that in the larger meetings and in the strategic decision-making every single developer's voice is heard and there are opportunities for their work to be promoted and for them, the community to actually share in the value. So what kind of events, for example, do you have some examples you can mention? Sure, so we're going to be at ELCE coming up in October and we also have a Zephyr hackathon there that I'm really excited about. Unfortunately it's already been sold out but we do have a waiting list and I want to encourage everybody who is at the conference to please at least try to attend. We're going to accommodate as many people as we can but like you said it's such a hot project right now that we're really having a lot of demand. And then there will be a whole bunch more just after that I'm sure? Yes, we're working on some contests so we can actually find ways for people to participate from the comfort of their home or from wherever they are so they don't have to get on an airplane and fly across the world to participate in an event they can participate in an event and contribute straight from their house. So what are some examples of some of the demands that developers have maybe? So it's really interesting that we just finished up our first developer survey where we had a chance to sit down and really talk with not just the core contributors and the maintainers but the regular folks contributing to the project. We're seeing a lot of excitement about adding more safety and security features right? The safety critical applications are crucial for us to really be proactive about and so the developers are really interested in that. They're interested in long term support because there's a huge market of products coming out that are powered by Zephyr that while we're already seeing it now long term support is certainly something that can be expected to increase that. And we're also seeing about half of our developers are engaging with Zephyr in terminal but we've got a large contingent that want to see tighter integration with IDEs different tool chains etc. So there's a growing community of SOCs that are supported and companies that are joining and supporting it? Yes, so we have, I believe it's something like over 110 supported boards right now and that on all of the major architectures. So that was for me when I was looking at the Zephyr project and trying to decide where am I going to professionally invest my time and energy. It was the diversity in the technology that supported with the Zephyr that really drew me to it and it's one of the places that we shine the strongest is you know there's a lot of art houses out there that have a lot of supported boards but the speed in which our community is able to put things out is really unmatched right now. So this company is like ARM and Intel but not many other companies but does Zephyr project have some kind of funds that can be used to are you hiring developers or is it each of the companies assigning them to the project? So there's a variety of different ways that organizations engage with the Zephyr project. We have some companies that you know participate through their membership and you know whatever level of membership they choose I believe you have to be a member of the Linux foundation and then you join the Zephyr project but we also have a number of companies and a number of organizations and individuals that are able to contribute in non-financial ways right so companies do put their developers on the projects but we're also starting to see a lot of excitement within the universities where companies that maybe are not yet members and I say yet of the Zephyr project are starting to say you know what we do have five interns we'd really like to get them started experimenting, hooking up our platform to Zephyr and so we're starting to see more and more diversity in the types of contributions that our member companies are making. So are you able to have a system where you can say ah we'd like some help here, here, here and they kind of join and do you have like some to-do lists and they can just fill out and do what they want or what they can? You know so the great thing about Zephyr is yeah you can be completely empowered to go off and build on your own and to promote the organization on your own however one of the nice things about the transparency within the Zephyr community is that all of our planning is open and so all you have to do is go to the Zephyr GitHub and look at the technical roadmap, look at the issues, join the calls there's so many different ways for developers and companies to find out how to plug in that you know they're able to say you know what I can't do this but I can do that and it ends up you get the you allow experts to be the experts in their given field so the security experts are obviously going to gravitate towards that part of the project whereas we also have a large number of companies that are participating on the non-technical aspects Nice, that sounds really cool Do you think should we try? I mean we haven't asked them but should we try to see if we can just approach a couple of I think so, I mean I it would be exciting to see what they're doing Yeah, so they're working on picking up Zephyr Did I do okay? Do you mind if I film for a second? Just what you do, do you want to say something about what's going on right here? Just introduce yourself, organization you're with What kind of thing did you do this week for example? Okay Do you want to talk about the demo? Are you doing demo for demo Friday right? Yes So that's in just one hour? Is it going to work? Yes What is the demo about? I'll do the demo just before We do the demo based on Mascara Mascara is an arm sub system It's based on V8M For now we're using TFM plus Zephyr to connect the Google IoT cloud Oh, nice So this is potentially the ones that could be Cortex M23 or M33 with hardware security Yes, security extension This reference board meant to demonstrate the PSA architecture and how you can use it to securely connect an end point device to the IoT cloud So is this some of the work you've been doing the security stuff that has to do with Zephyr? Yes, mostly we're trying to enable this part through hardware and some reference software and then Zephyr will try to deploy it out there in the world to show the valid use case scenarios Is it exciting to work on Zephyr? Is it a cool project to be part of? Yes, it's a very cool project There's a lot of collaboration happening It's happening very fast Everything is happening out there in the open So every partner and everybody can adjust to their needs without having to go through licensing That's really cool Okay, thanks a lot I'll check your demo just after So this is just some example of right here, some of the stuff that's happening So next for you is what do you say, the embedded? Yes, it will be in Edinburgh late October Alright, so looking forward to that Edinburgh, right? Yes In Scotland? Yes October 21st to the 25th Right