The Imagination backed Prpl Foundation announced a free OpenWrt Summit to be held in Dublin on Oct. 8, and co-located with Embedded Linux Conference Europe.

The Prpl Foundation, which Imagination Technologies founded last year to promote the development of MIPS-based Linux and Android software, is hosting a one-day conference devoted to the lightweight OpenWrt Linux distribution. The OpenWrt Summit will be held in Dublin, Ireland on Oct. 8, directly following the LinuxCon + CloudOpen + Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELCE) conference, which is being held Oct. 5-7. The free OpenWrt Summit will be located at the same Conference Centre Dublin venue.

Arduino Yun Mini

The Prpl Foundation describes OpenWrt as a disruptive technology, which is true, despite the fact that it has now been around for more than a decade. OpenWrt has enjoyed increased adoption on IoT devices like gateways, COMs, and SBCs such as the Arduino Yun and Arduino Yun Mini. Most of these products use MIPS-based wireless SoCs like the Atheros AR9331.

Linksys WRT54G

OpenWrt emerged from the stack running on the venerable Linksys WRT54G WiFi router, beloved of Linux hackers. The small-footprint, networking-oriented distribution has been widely used on router-based hacks, and was adopted for the Linksys NSLU2 (aka “SLUG”) networked attached storage device.

Earlier this month, the OpenWrt project released the latest OpenWrt 15.05 (“Chaos Calmer”) release, which features a fully writable filesystem with package management that offers different options for installation and customization. The enhancement means that users can overwrite vendor-supplied configurations with other third-party and custom applications.

According to The Register, the new package manager “almost sounds like a challenge to America’s Federal Communications Commission, which late in August issued a proposed rule-making that would demand Wi-Fi ‘lock down’.” The FCC proposal was presented as a way to keep OpenWrt hackers from flashing new code onto devices developed outside the U.S. that might exceed a WiFi router’s radio spectrum certification, says the story.

The OpenWrt Summit features speakers, technical sessions and “lightning talks” for all levels of experience, says the Prpl Foundation. The summit is particularly suitable for OpenWrt hackers, software developers maintaining OpenWrt packages, home users of OpenWrt, system-on-chip (SoC) makers, and system OEMs who leverage OpenWrt.

OpenWrt Summit speakers are said to include:

• Bedrich Kosata, head of Project Turris and chief science officer at CZ.NIC
• Cesare Garlati, chief security strategist at Prpl Foundation and co-chair of the Mobile Working Group at Cloud Security Alliance
• Federico Capoano, developer at the Cineca Consortium in Rome, Italy, and an active participant in the OpenWISP project, municipal WiFi, and related open source projects
• Jos Delbar, a software product manager at Technicolor Connected Home, responsible for the software strategy and software product definition supporting its worldwide CPE business
• Kathy Giori, senior product manager in the Wired/Wireless Infrastructure & Networking business unit of Qualcomm Atheros, who manages several upstream Linux kernel development projects

Selected conference topics include:

• Introduction to OpenWrt with Steven Barth
• Introducing the OpenWrt network subsystem with Steven Barth
• Adding new SoC to OpenWrt with Hauke Mehrtens
• Project Turris — open router with OpenWrt with Bedrich Kosata
• Do you really need to fork OpenWrt? with Federico Capoano
• Supporting services across multiple WAN interfaces with Hans Dedecker
• Panel discussion: many companies leverage OpenWrt — a peek from the inside with Kathy Giori
• OpenWrt and Linux Containers with Luka Perkov
• Security and Hardening with Steven Barth
• Securing the Internet of (broken) Things with Cesare Garlati
• Extending the UCI Data Model with Jos Delbar

“OpenWrt’s optimized network support and wide cross-platform portability are ideally suited for a whole new breed of connected devices,” stated Cesare Garlati, chief security strategist at Prpl Foundation and co-chair of the Mobile Working Group at Cloud Security Alliance. “And the vibrant open source community behind the project guarantees openness and interoperability across heterogeneous architectures.”

 
Further information

The OpenWrt Summit will be held in Dublin, Ireland on Oct. 8 at Conference Centre Dublin, co-located with the Embedded Linux Conference Europe. Pre-registration and presentation summaries for the free summit may be found at the OpenWrt Summit site.