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posted by janrinok on Monday May 21 2018, @09:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the Musk-Can-Do-As-He-Pleases dept.

Electrek reports that Tesla is beginning compliance efforts with respect to their GPL redistribution of components such as Linux, Busybox, Buildroot, QT, and other components:

Tesla has been taking some flak for years now in the software community for using open source software without complying with the licenses. In a step toward compliance, Tesla is now releasing some parts of its software, which is going to be useful to Tesla hackers and security researchers.

Some of the copyright holders have been complaining that Tesla hasn't been complying with their licenses. Software Freedom Conservancy, a not-for-profit organization pushing for open source software, has been on Tesla's case for a while over the issue.

We had received multiple reports of a GPL violation regarding Tesla's Model S. Customers who purchased Tesla's Model S received on-board system(s) that contained BusyBox and Linux, but did not receive any source code, nor an offer for the source... We know that Tesla received useful GPL compliance advice from multiple organizations, in addition to us, over these years."

In beginning their compliance efforts, Tesla Motors has specifically established Github repositories for their distributed builds of Buildroot and Linux for version 2018.12 of their software stack. Tesla's e-mail announcement read in part:

"Currently the material that is there is representative of the 2018.12 release, but it will be updated with new versions corresponding to new releases over time. Work is underway on preparing sources in other areas as well, together with a more coordinated information page. We wanted to let you know about this material as it is available now while work continues on the other parts. For further questions, please contact opensource@tesla.com."

With the brilliance of Mr. Musk and his ample staff, one would think that they would have figured out their license obligations without literally years of outside help--many small all-volunteer projects do it seemingly effortlessly as a matter of course--but in that, one would be wrong.

Also submitted by canopic jug.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2, Touché) by loonycyborg on Monday May 21 2018, @06:33PM (1 child)

    by loonycyborg (6905) on Monday May 21 2018, @06:33PM (#682309)

    Even then I expect accountability for things like MP3 patent royalties would make this easily implementable. All in all this boils down to people not being willing to do their work. In that case they're not entitled to their salaries either.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 21 2018, @06:49PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday May 21 2018, @06:49PM (#682313)

    All in all this boils down to people not being willing to do their work.

    Perhaps... however, have you ever tried to deal with a government bureaucracy? Those people are required by law to perform their functions for you, which is not at all the case in a corporation.

    In that case they're not entitled to their salaries either.

    Nobody is entitled to anything, least of all pushy fear mongering sales people trying to upsell LGPL software into a company that doesn't need the additional benefits they are hawking.

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