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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.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 21 2018, @11:01AM (4 children)
I didn't realize that Tesla was using open source. This means - what? If they are in full compliance at some point, that means they publish directions to access the computer? Might they offer you hacking advice? Basically, any Tom, Dick, or Harriet can modify his/her car? This puts automotive computing wizardry into the real of old-fashioned cars? While most of the population subscribed to the idea that "Detroit knows best", there were always motorheads willing to modify their engines, transmissions, suspension, exhaust, and even the bodies. If you could afford it, you could buy a brand new car, put it in the shop, put Edelbrocks and Hooker headers on it, slap a huge 4-barrel carb on it, jack it up, swap out the muffler for a couple Cherry Bombs - oh, I've forgotten about the wide tires. No muscle car is complete without big, fat tires. And, all the while, you were perfectly legal.
Relatively few motorheads could afford a new car, so they generally modified second and third hand vehicles. SOME motorheads had a lot of money to spend, so they could afford to get inside the engine, bored it out and stroke it, have it blueprinted, maybe even modify the cooling system, and lubrication. Oh, oh, oh, let's not forget the shifter!! Gotta have that Hurst shifter!! And, for the automatic transmission nuts, a shift kit - every shift is fast and hard.
Can't wait to see what kids do with their cars if they can play Performancs Engineer from their smart phones!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday May 21 2018, @11:11AM (1 child)
Looking at the summary, they're only releasing the Linux kernel tweaking they've done. The interesting code presumably lives in userland, and presumably won't be bound by the GPL.
Even if they did, I imagine they'd still prohibit running custom code (i.e Tivoization [wikipedia.org]). I don't imagine it would actually be illegal to do so though. Unlike the aviation industry, the software in cars isn't legally regulated at all, to my knowledge. (Even if we have the motor vehicle industry to thank for MISRA C.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 22 2018, @09:34AM
Smog testing verifies the checksum of the firmware image for the ECU/PCM. If it is invalid you fail smog. If m of n tests haven't passed, it fails smog. If the check engine light comes on, or doesn't properly come on, it fails smog.
These are all examples from California, but most of these should be common to states which have smog/engine modification laws. The harshest actually IS NOT California by the way, but rather Arizona, where they have a single provider smog program which uses spectrometers similiar to those used during EPA testing that measure total volume rather than simply PPM values and can catch changes in engine displacement even if you somehow kept timing values in check.
While most of the older hardware was simply 'security by obscurity', the newer hardware is often similar to Tesla's and has firmware signing and checksumming which disallows user modified images from being operated. There are certain exceptions, like most of the American Truck motors/performance cars which may allow that, but most of the imported cars are far more restrictive about it to avoid regulatory bodies cracking down on them or limiting import.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 22 2018, @02:25AM
Heh. [google.com]
Ah, the days of adjusting (solid) valve lifters.
Oooo. The other week, I saw a cherry T Bucket[1] with a bitchin flathead.
Must have been on his way to the Friday evening gathering. [google.com]
[1] Not a Deuce Coupe. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 13 2018, @12:06PM
I've received a patch from Tesla for a small time project I used to maintain. So yeah, they do.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 21 2018, @12:04PM (10 children)
If Tesla has chosen to not go commercial license with Qt.... that's saying something, more about the Qt commercial license than Tesla, I think.
We use Qt sort of "on the side" in our area and also are sticking with the LGPL version. Talks with Qt commercial quickly turned to profit sharing with another division, which shut down all consideration of using their commercial license in our company and even turned management against the LGPL libraries, even with over a decade invested by a team of dozens of developers.
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(Score: 1) by loonycyborg on Monday May 21 2018, @01:03PM (9 children)
What was exact reason for refusing to use commercial license of Qt? Qt isn't the only middleware that is free for non-commercial use but has commercial options. Are they in principle opposed to all such solutions?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 21 2018, @03:33PM (4 children)
The company has no problem spending money - MSDN licenses at thousands of dollars per developer per year are not a problem, and a similar licensing arrangement with Qt at a similar price would have been readily accepted.
What Qt(commercial) was proposing was taking a percentage of our device sales as a form of royalty - this would involve disclosure of sales volumes, pricing and other sensitive information that costs a tremendous amount of administrative and internal political overhead to get released.
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(Score: 2, Insightful) by loonycyborg on Monday May 21 2018, @04:19PM (3 children)
Isn't gathering and submitting this data already required for purposes of taxation anyway? I see a lot of reasons of keeping such information hidden from public at large but none of them would be convincing for someone who wants to act as a honest and fair player on the free market. Even then such data could be shared with Qt people under an NDA.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 21 2018, @04:40PM (2 children)
Yes, but (in a multinational corporation) that data is gathered and submitted by a complex organizational structure and is not released to the public in the same detail or format as would be required for software royalty payments.
All sounds good in theory, and in practice we're very much an above board large multinational corporation - but that doesn't mean that every manager/director/VP involved in making such a flow of information possible is ready and willing to do so. The bottom line is: a higher flat fee - not tied to sales numbers, would be preferred by many aspects of the corporation.
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(Score: 2, Touché) by loonycyborg on Monday May 21 2018, @06:33PM (1 child)
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.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 21 2018, @06:49PM
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.
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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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21 2018, @04:27PM
Qt is not only "free for non-commercial", though.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday May 22 2018, @09:07AM (2 children)
Nope, it's LGPL. You aren't prohibited from making money.
(Score: 1) by loonycyborg on Tuesday May 22 2018, @06:40PM (1 child)
True, but you're forbidden from restricting redistribution of any modified variations you could make. And many corps would want it for whatever reason. If not then whether it's commercial or LGPL is irrelevant. Then commercial license is basically a way to support Qt project. Maybe doing plain donations would be better in this case?
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Wednesday May 23 2018, @10:39AM
That might be an issue if you're planning on porting Qt to your platform and don't want to release the port as FOSS, but I don't see it being an issue for ordinary application code.
LGPL lets you create new widgets and keep that code proprietary.