Call for Participation

4th Winter School on Operating Systems (WSOS ’26)

System Software Research in Europe – open, flexible, dependable, and built to last

16–20 March 2026 · Schloss Zell an der Pram, Austria

The GI Special Interest Group on Operating Systems (Fachgruppe Betriebssysteme) invites applications to WSOS ’26, a five-day residential winter school for early-career researchers, selected Master’s students, and industry engineers.

Set in a baroque castle in Upper Austria, WSOS blends deep technical sessions with hands-on labs, panels, and informal exchanges—ideal for building skills, collaborations, and communities.

Why this theme—and why in Europe?

Modern system software must evolve rapidly yet serve for decades. WSOS ’26 explores how Europe can build and rely on its own systems stacks: not through slogans, but through engineering practices that make software open, adaptable, robust, and maintainable.

A technical agenda for European self-sufficiency

What we as a community can do now (and what’s already underway):

• End-to-end open stacks: kernel, runtime, toolchain, and packaging that build reproducibly; practical paths to replace opaque components (firmware, boot loaders, drivers) with open, verifiable alternatives.
• Upstream-first engineering: strategies for getting features into mainline kernels and core toolchains; minimizing long-term forks; governance and maintainer workflows.
• Interoperable interfaces that last: stable ABIs/APIs, conformance tests, and compatibility layers that survive hardware churn and vendor changes.
• Performance portability across architectures: techniques for multi-ISA support (x86-64, ARM, RISC-V, accelerators) and disaggregated setups (e.g., CXL-class memory, smart NICs) without vendor lock-in.
• Dependability at scale: verification, fuzzing, isolation, and supply-chain security for components we can audit and maintain locally.
• Sustainable maintenance: LTS strategies, release engineering, CI on European testbeds, and reproducible artifacts that others can rebuild years later.
• Ecosystem building: education, documentation, artifact evaluation, and cross-lab collaboration that lower barriers to entry for European contributors.

We particularly welcome experience reports and demos from European projects: open firmware efforts, verified kernels and microkernels, container and virtualization stacks, storage and network dataplanes, toolchains, and packaging systems focused on reproducibility and longevity.