2.3.2. Proposed technological innovation and novelty in relation to the SotA

(Recommended length: 4 pages) Clearly explain the progress and technological innovation proposed by your project, with reference to the current technology state-of-the-art. Explain what differentiates the project from other R&D efforts, how it builds on the SotA and which novelty it brings from a technological standpoint. > This subsection should convince evaluators that the consortium has sufficient insight into the technological challenges and proposes significant breakthroughs to bring technological innovation and novelty.

Open Source Software (OSS) has various advantages compared with Closed Source Software (CSS), which has been extensively discussed in [1]. However until now no safety critical applications have ever been authorized for operation in a railway environment, despite the fact that OSS has been mentioned as legitemite inside the EN 50128 CENELEC standard that regulates development and maintenance for safety critical software for railways and in particulat signalling.

One challenge is give by the fact that the qualification of contributers has to be traced down to each individual and need to be recorded in a propper way. While in closed organizations qualification tracibility is a well practiced activity, ther might be concerns with respect to data sequrity and data protection for open source consortia such procedures are not yet established.

[1] "Study on the Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU", Final report, Prepared on November 20, 2006