Bjoern Brandeburg, University of North Carolina
Jim Anderson, University of North Carolina

Based on lessons learned in developing and maintaining LITMUS^RT, arguments in favor of an intensified collaboration between the academic and the open-source real-time communities are presented, and several ways in which ongoing efforts in these two communities may benefit each other are outlined.

Some (unfortunately) commonly-encountered sources of friction and mutual misconceptions, which result from differing backgrounds and objectives in these two communities, are exposed, with the goal of finding common ground.

Further, a “wish list” is presented of possible additions and changes to PREEMPT-RT that would enhance Linux’s viability as the “platform of choice” for real-time-systems research. These improvements are substantiated by examining the implementation requirements of EDF-HSB, a candidate algorithm for earliest-deadline-first (EDF) scheduling support in Linux that integrates hard and soft real-time guarantees as well as best-effort scheduling with bandwidth reservations.