Dan Cauchy: The future of open source automotive software

Car hacking continues to be a concern and high profile software bugs are on the rise and in the news at an alarming frequency. The traditional way of developing automotive software is not working. OEMs are starting to adopt an open source approach to change the way software is built for cars. Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) is a Linux Foundation Collaboration Project that is bringing together OEMs and suppliers to build a shared platform from the ground-up for in-vehicle infotainment. Dan Cauchy will provide an update on the latest AGL activities and discuss how AGL and GENIVI have been collaborating in various areas of open source automotive software, and what lies ahead in the future. He will also discuss how developing a common platform and building an ecosystem and supply chain that all use the same code base will transform the traditional automotive supply chain model, reduce fragmentation, improve time-to-market and enable companies to focus more on rapid innovation and new features.

DAN CAUCHY
General Manager, Automotive, The Linux Foundation Dan is the General Manager of Automotive at Linux Foundation. He is responsible for the overall management and execution of the Automotive Grade Linux collaborative project, an industry effort to build an open source automotive reference platform backed by leading car manufacturers around the world.

Dan has over 22 years of experience spanning the automotive, telecom, networking, and mobile business verticals. Prior to his current position, Dan was the Vice President and General Manager of MontaVista’s Automotive Business Unit (acquired by Mentor), responsible for P&L and worldwide execution of MontaVista’s automotive software strategy, sales, marketing, products, and services. During this period, Dan served on the Board of Directors of the GENIVI Alliance and was responsible for the creation of the GENIVI Compliance Program, a group that he chaired for its first three years, which led to the release of the GENIVI Specification, a widely adopted standard in the automotive industry. While at MontaVista, Dan previously held the position of VP of Marketing and BD, where he was responsible for the development and execution of MontaVista’s global marketing strategy, which led to an acquisition by Cavium.

Based in Silicon Valley, Dan has extensive startup experience. He was the Director of Product Management at Atrica (acquired by Nokia-Siemens Networks), a carrier Ethernet equipment provider startup. Prior to Atrica, Dan was the Director of Architecture and Strategy at BlueLeaf Networks, a tunable laser optical networking startup (now Picarro). He also previously held senior management positions and engineering leadership positions at Cisco Systems, Newbridge Networks (acquired by Alcatel), and Nortel.

Dan earned a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering (with a Computer Engineering major) from the University of Ottawa. He holds three patents in the areas of routing and networking, with several others pending.