The Linux Foundation (TLF) has announced the civil infrastructure platform (CIP) that is to provide software building blocks to assure reliable operations in various industries including oil and gas. The announcement was made at the Embedded Linux conference in San Diego this month where the nonprofit organization unveiled its plans for ‘mass innovation through open source software.’ The CIP is to provide the software foundation required for essential services for civil infrastructure and economic development on a global scale.
The CIP seeks to mitigate the ‘duplication of effort, loss of development time, fragmentation and interoperability issues’ that bedevil major projects. TLF executive director Jim Zemlin said, ‘Open source software can accelerate innovation, enable interoperability and transform technology and economics for an industry. The CIP will provide a a common framework to support some of society’s most important functions for decades to come.’
The CIP will add a base layer of industrial-grade software to the Linux kernel adding safety, security and reliability to the open source flagship operating system. Software ‘sustainability’ is also a key objective, particularly in the face of infrastructure life cycles of 10-60 years. Early CIP backers include Hitachi, Siemens and Toshiba.