POSE: Phase I: Open-Source Ecosystem (OSE) for Open-Source Software Safety Pre-qualification

This project is funded by Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) which seeks to harness the power of open-source development for the creation of new technology solutions to problems of national and societal importance. Safety qualification is a vital step for approving the use of safety-critical systems such as used in air and railway transportation, cars, medical devices, and space vehicles. Prequalification is the process of preparing hardware, software, and documentation that can be shared and reused by multiple systems that go through safety qualification. The reduction in cost and effort from using prequalified subsystems can have a huge impact on the affordability of safety-critical systems. A successful example of a prequalification process involves the open-source Real-Time Executive for Multiprocessor Systems (RTEMS), a real-time operating system used in satellites and space probes. The prequalification reduces the cost to develop and qualify new spacecraft that use the RTEMS software. This project explores the potential to extend the existing prequalification process to space agency requirements and to other systems that require safety qualification. These systems are vital to critical infrastructure and national security. Reducing the time, effort, and costs of their qualification will benefit society. At present, limited support exists for prequalified open-source products other than the RTEMS software. This lack of support limits the applicability of prequalification to other open-source software products. It is not yet known how difficult it may be to generalize the prequalification approach to other products. This project is organized around three primary tasks. First, surveys and interviews will seek to discover the extent to which prequalification may be valuable more broadly to open-source software projects. Second, the appropriate means to structure, manage, and sustain a prequalification ecosystem are examined through surveys, interviews, and process assessment of the current practice. Third, the project catalyzes the community of contributors and stakeholders to cultivate interest and engagement in the prospect of an open-source ecosystem focused on prequalification. Through these tasks, this project will scope and plan a new open-source ecosystem that can separate the concerns of prequalification from those of the prequalified software products. This ecosystem has the potential to transform the field of safety-critical systems engineering in the United States and worldwide. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.