Open Source Tools for Large-Scale Development?
2The emergence of open source solutions over the last decade has deeply transformed the industry. Open source solutions are now used at the core of large industrial products and development processes. From a software development perspective, many open source products are now broadly used to support a wide range of development aspects, including code editing (Eclipse CDT), debugging (GDB), tracing (LTTng), version control (Git), code review (Gerrit), etc. From a tool perspective, Eclipse has become the de-facto standard platform.
For a large software development organizations, the emergence of industrial strength open source solutions opens new possibilities as it allows to increase agility and ability to get required product features and improvements, facilitate customization for specific domains, reduce dependency towards lock-in solutions, empower developers, reduce overall cost, and speeds up product development and innovations. Aerospace, automotive, commercial vehicles, medical, public utility, rail, and telecommunication are all impacted by the open source tool paradigm.
While the use of open source solutions can lead to significant cost saving, it requires involvement and investment. To maximize potential benefits of open source solutions, companies need to develop their own expertise in the core open source technologies and invest in the industrialization of open source solutions. In this presentation, we will discuss Ericsson's evolution over the last decade regarding usage of open source solutions, investments in the industrialization of open source technologies, involvement in the open source community, and how do we navigate in this new paradigm. We will also discuss lessons learned and plan for future development where modeling plays a big role. Our goal is to play a leadership role in the establishment of a vibrant community of end users (in different application domains) and technology providers to enable industrial strength open source solutions.