Tesla Releases Some of Its Software To Comply With Open-Source Licenses

Jeremy Allison - Sam shares a blog post from Software Freedom Conservancy, congratulating Tesla on their first public step toward GPL compliance: Conservancy rarely talks publicly about specifics in its ongoing GNU General Public License (GPL) enforcement and compliance activity, in accordance with our Principles of Community Oriented GPL Enforcement. We usually keep our compliance matters confidential -- not for our own sake -- but for the sake of violators who request discretion to fix their mistakes without fear of public reprisal. We're thus glad that, this week, Tesla has acted publicly regarding its current GPL violations and has announced that they've taken their first steps toward compliance. While Tesla acknowledges that they still have more work to do, their recent actions show progress toward compliance and a commitment to getting all the way there.

something a bit less vague...

[FatdogHaiku]

https://github.com/teslamotors... [github.com]
https://github.com/teslamotors... [github.com]

Re:

[jonwil]

The second looks very much like a kernel source tree to me...

Please donate to Conservancy.

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

Full disclosure - I'm on the Board of Directors of the Software Freedom Conservancy.

Having said that, please donate to the Conservancy - they are the only organization doing GPL compliance work like this for the Linux kernel. This blog post shows how hard they work behind the scenes (they've been working with Tesla on this violation since June 2013) to help get everyone access to the source code they are entitled to have.

https://sfconservancy.org/supp... [sfconservancy.org]

Re:

[nnull]

5 years to get them to comply? Shows how much Tesla cares. All it shows that I can rip code and get away with it after making millions.

I can walk into a lot of companies that do exactly what Tesla does. Hell, you can just go to the up coming PackExpo show and find violators all over the damn place (Nobody really checks industrial machine software since very little people have access to it). The industry has shown that you can do this and chances are you will get away with it. None of them contribute anythin

Re:

[0100010001010011]

I think you seriously underestimate the ability and staffing of engineering groups doing this stuff. I would bet 99% aren't aware of it. Has any big huge revelation come from these releases? It looks like a pretty boring code release, technically.

It's why companies like the BSD. And history shows it's not that they don't give back (Look at FreeBSD's commits from corporations) it's that they don't like being strong armed into nothing.

Re:

[sg_oneill]

It's why companies like the BSD. And history shows it's not that they don't give back (Look at FreeBSD's commits from corporations) it's that they don't like being strong armed into nothing

I'd say its more a lawyer thing than anything. The engineers want to give back. But the GPL terrifies the lawyers because they seem to think it means you have to. Heres the thing you ONLY have to if the end result is being distributed, and even then your only obliged to provide source access to whoever you've distributed

Re:

[tlhIngan]

But really theres no reason to fear the GPL, as long as your not being shifty

Or the first lesson is, everyone pirates software.

Yes, a GPL violation is piracy. Whether it's distributing the Linux kernel without source, or Photoshop, or Windows, or Office, it's all the same thing. (No one has to agree to the GPL at all to use GPL software. If you don't, it falls under standard copyright law, so distribution without agreeing to the GPL is like making copies of commercial software).

It makes the whole "copyleft

Re:

[tepples]

Often there are blanket policies like "No GPLv3 software allowed, at all" which reduces the paperwork some.

And sometimes these policies are driven by a "robustness" requirement not to disclose Installation Information. This requirement can come, for example, from a safety regulator or from a platform curator.

Re:

[booboo]

If I had to guess, I'd say 'eventual compliance' creates a survivorship bias that increases the average quality of available open source software.

Reabsorption

[Grady Martin]

When a major corporation spends millions of dollars over the course of five years illegally deploying a fork of the Linux kernel, suddenly reabsorbing that fork back into mainline may require a significant amount of time and resources than it would have, had the corporation complied from the start. Will Tesla be expected to help in this respect?