New software technology in space: BOSS – a dependable open source embedded operating system

Abstract

BOSS targets a principle which the world forgot a long time ago: Simplicity. BOSS is an embedded real time operating system for safety critical applications. Our experience shows that the first enemy of safety is the complexity. If you need safety, use only what you can understand. This was the philosophy creating BOSS. First: build every thing as simple as possible. Second: use modern framework technology to reduce the complexity of the applications. Third: use component technology to be able to handle the remaining complexity. The result is very promising. BOSS is already working for years without interruptions, for example in space (Satellite BIRD [BIRD0]), in medical devices, protocol tester and other Applications [ROD03]. Furthermore BOSS is opensource, so you can look inside, adapt it and move to other platforms/hardware.