Open Source Summit EU 2025 Recap: True Shares the Highlights
This year’s Open Source Summit Europe took place in Amsterdam, bringing together leaders, developers, and enthusiasts from across the global open source community. While Zephyr was a major theme of the event, PHYTEC also made an appearance with our SOMs in Space demo, drawing quite a crowd at the Texas Instruments booth.
PHYTEC had full representation at OSS with engineers from America and Germany attending the summit. We had the opportunity to participate in a live panel discussion with TI and close partners where they explored the challenges of bringing products to market in an era of always-connected devices, growing user expectations, and evolving cybersecurity regulations, highlighting how collaboration and open source lie at the heart of modern innovation.
We sat down with PHYTEC Applications Engineer, True Loan, who attended the summit, to hear his biggest takeaways on embedded trends, open source adoption, and what he’s excited to bring back to PHYTEC!
What trends caught your eye at OSS Summit?
Security was the hot topic. CRA compliance kept popping up, and I got hands-on with tools like VulnScout for CVE analysis which ties right into my recent work with cve-check.bbclass. I also learned more about the tricks hackers use to get into embedded systems, which was equal parts fascinating and motivating.
Another cool trend was OpenAMP + Zephyr gaining traction for co-processors. That combo looks like it’s going to make firmware way more portable in the future.
How did our SOMs in Space demo go over?
It was a total hit. Every time I was in the showroom, there was a line of people waiting for their turn. Andrei from TI even threw in a last-minute prize for the top scorer which made it even more fun and competitive.
Any Linux tools you’re excited to try out here at PHYTEC?
I’m especially excited about bitbake-setup, a soon-to-be-upstreamed tool that’s like an OE-native version of phyLinux. Moving toward something standardized like this could cut down on maintenance overhead.
Alongside that, I’m eager to experiment with VulnScout for CVE analysis and dive into agentic AI - specifically exploring creating AI agents that specialize in embedded development.
Where do you see open source heading in embedded development?
Full speed ahead. With RISC-V on the rise, open source is only going to keep accelerating. It’s simply the smarter, more cost-effective way forward for everyone.
What would you like to see more of at future OSS conferences?
I'd love to see more hands-on workshops and larger session spaces. The Linux driver session for USB devices was so popular it filled up right away, which shows how valuable that kind of format is.The most popular talks drew huge crowds, which is great to see, and bigger rooms would make it easier for everyone to join in.
OSS Highlights
🌐 Check out the TI and Friends panel discussion here
🌐 Check out True's favorite session - Creating Products with Upstream SW - here
