Open Source Summit India 2026

Bare-metal developers pride themselves on simplicity, control, and understanding every line of code. Then along comes Zephyr—with device trees, Kconfig, west, and layers of abstraction—and suddenly, even blinking an LED feels complicated. So… is Zephyr actually scary?

In this talk, we take a practical and honest look at why Zephyr often feels overwhelming to bare-metal developers, what’s really going on under the hood, and whether that complexity is justified. Through side-by-side comparisons and live examples, we map familiar bare-metal concepts to their Zephyr equivalents and uncover where the fear comes from—and where it disappears.

This isn’t a “Zephyr is better” talk. It’s about understanding trade-offs, choosing the right tool, and making the transition without losing your mental model.

By the end, you’ll see that Zephyr isn’t replacing bare metal—it’s structuring the complexity you were already managing.

Modern server infrastructure is frequently limited by proprietary UEFI firmware—a slow, unauditable "black box" that introduces security risks and operational bloat. This session presents a transformative alternative: a lean, open-source boot stack pairing coreboot with LinuxBoot to achieve rapid boot times .
We will explore the technical synergy between these two powerhouses. coreboot handles the critical "early wake-up" of silicon—including DRAM, CPU, and PCI initialization—before handing control to LinuxBoot. By embedding a minimalist Linux kernel directly into the firmware flash, LinuxBoot replaces complex UEFI DXE phases with battle-tested upstream drivers. Attendees will learn the conceptual foundations of the u-root Go-based userland for flexible networking and storage logic, alongside the kexec system call for seamless transitions to the production OS. This session provides a roadmap for building vendor-neutral, high-performance infrastructure from the reset vector up.

Julian Gordon of LF Decentralized Trust will host a conversation with a cross-section of Indian organizations that are driving digital public infrastructure implementations, both domestically and internationally, including Networks for Humanity and Digi Yatra Foundation. India is leading the way in transforming digital ecosystems in government, finance, identity, and more. This session will be an opportunity to hear from those developing and deploying critical open source decentralized technologies to modernize core systems, ushering in more efficiencies, enhanced transparency, stronger security, and increased privacy.

Key topics will include:

-Real-world cases in banking and payment networks, government data infrastructure, decentralized identities, and energy transition
-The role of open development and governance in fostering the collaboration, innovation and trust required for these deployments
-Challenges including interoperability, security, regulatory compliance and skill gaps
-Practical insights for building resilient, collaborative, future-proofed open source networks

This session presents the challenges which Telco service providers have in moving towards Autonomous Networks and adopting GenAI, AgenticAI - especially for OSS and Network Operations. This presentation highlights how some of the challenges can be solved using LFN projects and benefits to Telco Network Service Providers