Build
Open software. Joint engineering. Deployable results. Our centre of gravity is engineering outcomes — not press releases.
Collaborate on open software, joint engineering projects, reference architectures, and IP frameworks that turn ideas into deployable solutions. Everything here is designed to be reused by members, extended in working groups, and validated against public conformance evidence.
Projects on the bench
Five projects, at three maturity levels. Incubating means the spec or scaffolding exists and we are shaping scope. Active means code is landing and public test results are being published. Proposed means the need is real, the working group is forming, and an owner is being named.
A vendor-neutral, open-source control plane for hybrid wired deployments — spanning ethernet switching, coax, phoneline, powerline, and fiber under a single management surface.
Cross-technology interoperability and conformance test suite. Reproducible tests, public results, and shared tooling that replace costly per-vendor labs.
A channel-aware simulation toolkit for mixed-media deployments. Model coax, powerline, fiber, and twisted-pair impairments in the same scenario.
A practical toolkit and knowledge base for EU CRA and US NIST readiness in wired edge products — threat models, SBOM templates, hardening profiles.
Reference pipelines for AI-assisted operations at the wired edge: anomaly detection, capacity forecasting, and closed-loop remediation.
New projects enter the foundation through a lightweight proposal flow: a one-page problem statement, a committed contributor, and sponsorship from at least two member organizations. Proposals that pass initial review become incubating projects and get a public backlog.
Contribute code
We operate under a permissive open-source posture by default (Apache 2.0 or MIT,
per project) with an explicit developer certificate of origin. Contributor
ergonomics matter: every project ships with a working make dev path, a
reproducible test harness, and a CI that publishes conformance results where
relevant.
If you are new, start with an issue tagged good-first-build in any repo. If
you are experienced and want to move fast, propose a feature as an ADR and we
will pair you with a maintainer.
- Repos: github.com/relisav
- License posture: Apache 2.0 / MIT
- Governance: Per-project maintainer council; foundation-level TSC for cross-project decisions.
Reference architectures
Reference architectures are the most requested assets the foundation produces. They are opinionated, reproducible, and map to concrete member deployments — not idealized whitepapers.
Available now
- Hybrid broadband access. Ethernet switching + fiber + connectivity over coax and phoneline for mixed-plant operators.
- Smart-building retrofit. Powerline and connectivity over existing copper for brownfield commercial buildings, with a CRA-aligned security profile.
- Industrial brownfield edge. Deterministic, cross-media edge fabric for manufacturing sites with 10+ year installed wiring.
In progress
- Utility substation comms. Ethernet + powerline with grid-scale resilience and regulatory annexes.
- Automotive in-plant + in-vehicle. Alignment of in-plant manufacturing networks with in-vehicle wired stacks.
Each reference architecture ships with: an architecture diagram, a parts list
with known-good silicon and PHY options, a conformance checklist, a CRA / NIST
hardening profile, and a working wireSim scenario you can run locally.
Tools & simulation
Engineering moves at the speed of its tools. Foundation tooling is designed to be runnable on a laptop, embeddable in member CI pipelines, and extensible.
wireSim— channel-aware simulation across coax, powerline, fiber, and twisted-pair in the same scenario.interopHarness— reproducible cross-technology conformance suite with public results.craKit— threat models, SBOM templates, and hardening profiles for edge products.openEdgeFabric— vendor-neutral control plane for hybrid wired deployments.edgeAIOps— reference pipelines for AI-assisted operations at the wired edge.
All foundation-produced specs and test vectors are published under a royalty-free, reciprocal license. Member patent commitments cover conforming implementations of foundation specs — no surprise licensing for deployers.
How joint engineering works
Joint engineering is not a slide deck. A typical engagement looks like this:
- Problem statement. Two or more members name a shared deployment blocker.
- Charter. A short charter (scope, non-goals, success criteria, license) is approved by the TSC within two weeks.
- Sprint. A small working group runs a time-boxed sprint — eight to twelve weeks is typical — producing working code, a test harness, and a draft spec.
- Public review. Output goes to public review; feedback is addressed in the open.
- Landing. The result is merged into the appropriate foundation project and becomes part of the next reference architecture update.
Want a project spun up? Bring a problem and a co-sponsor. Head to contact or open a proposal in any of our repos.