2025-03-11 – 15:05-15:35 (Africa/Abidjan), Auditorium
Discover how the OpenRail Association is pioneering open-source solutions for the railway sector, tackling legal, cultural, and organizational challenges while driving innovation in areas such as infrastructure simulation, timetable creation, and digital train technologies.
In 2024, the OpenRail Association launched with a mission to create a supportive framework for open-source projects in the railway sector. As a sector where software is not the product but the means to operate trains in a safe, efficient, and customer-friendly way, this provides specific challenges. Started as a joint effort of the German, French and Swiss railway companies and the international union of railways, the OpenRail Association is expanding and has incubated the first open source projects.
This presentation will cover our journey, including how we tackled legal, organizational, and cultural challenges. We will provide insights into key open-source projects in areas such as railway infrastructure simulation, timetable creation, and freight train digital coupling.
We will share the lessons learned from integrating open source into a sector primarily focused on trains, moving people, and goods, where software is merely a means to achieve these goals—unlike the software industry, where software itself is the core product and open source has long been well-established.
Cornelius Schumacher is a long-time contributor and leader in the open source community. He has worked on a variety of projects, from volunteer-driven to enterprise. Originally a developer, he has moved into topics of governance, open source compliance, and how to run open source projects well. Cornelius Schumacher works as Open Source Steward in the CTO team of DB Systel helping teams to successfully use and contribute to open source.