Tesla Starts To Release Its Cars' Open-Source Linux Software Code (zdnet.com) 83
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla cars are powered not only by batteries but by open-source software. Until recently, though, Tesla hasn't lived up to its obligations under open-source licenses, but now Tesla is finally releasing some of its Linux source code for the Model S and X cars. The Tesla GitHub repository contains the code for the Model S/X 2018.12 software release. Specifically, it holds the system image on the Tesla Autopilot platform, the kernel sources for its underlying hardware, and the code for its Nvidia Tegra-based infotainment system.
Tesla will release additional open-source code for other systems in their cars soon. According to Tesla, "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." The electric car thought-leader will also update its code as updated software releases are made.
Tesla will release additional open-source code for other systems in their cars soon. According to Tesla, "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." The electric car thought-leader will also update its code as updated software releases are made.
This is a good sign (Score:2)
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AFAIK the one time MS was caught distributing GPL contaminated software they verified it and re-released the software under the GPL.
But you obviously have something more recent in mind?
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If, and that's a big if, they actually release the source code and don't do what Microsoft does which is to talk about it, but never do it.
Or like Apple, release it to begin with, but then slowly forget to update their opensource website with new software releases, until the open source parts of the iPhone haven't been released for the last 4 years despite their browser engine being LGPL.
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How does taking years to come into GPL compliance make Tesla and thought-leader?
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If others follow his example, he's a thought leader. Even if he's leading them in a direction you don't like.
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Um, others already "follow [sfconservancy.org]" his example.
You are not being a "thought leader" when you spot a police car on the freeway and slow down to the posted speed limit, which is the car-analogy version of what Tesla's doing here.
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This kind of "lack of IP" (similar to their opened patents) is what makes it look more like a pyramid scheme and less of a business. A pyramid scheme that may, in addition to enriching Elon, make electric cars more viable, but a still scheme.
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Because anyone on Wall Street cares about what someone on Slashdot posts? You’re joking, right?
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Again, you think Slashdot actually matters to any investor? If this conspiracy were real it would be posted on a site that was actually relevant like Reddit.
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Funny thing about Musk cocksuckers. They have horrible comebacks and make up ridiculously stupid comebacks. Oh and funny thing you mention 4chan as it’s also far more relevant than this site.
No one who is a big time investor either posts or cares about something posted to Slashdot.
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The stock value isn't selling thousands of cars (Score:2)
Tesla as a company is valued similar to the world's largest car companies, who sell millions of cars every year, and have for a long time. Tesla sells thousands - and loses money on every one. In order for the price people are paying for Tesla stock to be justified by the business, Tesla would need to:
Grow over a thousand times bigger
Be making money rather than losing money
Do so consistently, predictably
Nobody has made money on Tesla as a business, Tesla loses money. Lots of people have made money on Tesla,
Re: The stock value isn't selling thousands of car (Score:2)
Come on. Tesla sold and delivered not âzthousands of carsâoe but 100000 cars last year. And Tesla isnâ(TM)t making profits only because it is heavily investing into factories for cars and batteries. They definitely are making profits with the cars they sell.
This does not mean that Tesla is guaranteed to succeed, but it certainly isnâ(TM)t exactly failing yet either.
And Nissan 100 million. More Leafs than Teslas (Score:2)
While Nissan sold a 100 MILLION.
They've sold more Nissan Leafs than Tesla has sold total cars, and the Leaf is just a footnote for Nissan.
In any recent period, if Tesla sold X thousand, Nissan sold X million. Nissan isn't one of the top most valuable car companies. Why is Tesla?
Oh btw Nissan (and BMW and Chrysler and all the others) make money when they sell cars.
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Justified or not, people invest because of what they think Tesla will be in the long term. And, like others said, Tesla is selling the cars at a profit, but has invested heavily, which will take some time to pay off.
The reason why many, including me, believe Tesla has a chance to become a dominating car brand is not just that they make cool electric cars (the Leaf may sell well, and be a very sensible choice, but is hardly cool). It is also how they changed the speed of development of new models, the OTA up
Could happen. Stock price assumes is already did (Score:2)
> believe Tesla has a chance to become a dominating car brand
There is certainly a chance. Currently their stock is valued the same as the company that ALREADY IS the biggest car company in the world. The current stock price assumes Tesla will beat all the big companies, with 100% certainty, and soon. In fact Tesla isn't even in the top 5, probably not the top ten.
> It's a gamble, as buying stock always is. I'm planning to buy some
At the current stock price, it's not really a gamble. Long term, you ca
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The numbers and relations you claim are way off, which is particularly egregious given that so much of this data is readily available in press releases from Nissan and Tesla.
In what time period, or should I say era? According to Nissan's own press report [nissan-global.com], the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance combined sold 10.6 million units in 2017, with Nissan's portion being 5.8 million. Your claim is off by almost a factor of 20! To put how outrageous your claim is in context, the t
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> Note that Nissan reports its sales by month, per region, so one has to add up the Leaf sale figures for Japan, Europe, and the US across the January through March 2018 production and sales PDFs, all found here.
Or on your first link, you may notice they've sold 540,623 electric vehicles. It's buried in the article since electric is kind of a footnote for Nissan-Renault. Still almost twice as many as Tesla, but not a particularly significant part of their business.
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First, you decided to compare Tesla specifically with Nissan (only) and the Nissan Leaf, using absurdly false numbers that you gave with zero citation. If you wanted to compare Tesla's output to not just one manufacturer but the automotive conglomerate
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> was only built in limited quantities from 2008-2012
They are still a boutique manufacturer. A footnote.
> the combined efforts of three long-standing industry giants trying to sell electric
Since we agree Tesla isn't anywhere near the same ballpark as Nissan-Renault as a company, perhaps you'd like to explain why their stock is valued as if they were quite a bigger and more successful than Nissan-Renault? Also GM, Ford, Toyota, etc. The stock is priced as if they were biggest, most successful car comp
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That is your opinion and a speculative one at that. I am not interested in discussing opinions, future predictions, the stock market, etc. I just wanted to provide some corrections to some false claims you made.
No, it was clear from my previous comments that we don't agree on that point, at all. Please don't put words in my mouth.
Also, there is no such single c
Pro tip: Read pages before linking to them (Score:2)
> Nissan, Renault, and Mitsubishi are three, independently traded, separate companies
Not exactly. If you were able to post a link that worked, you could have clicked on your link, and without even scrolling down past the first screen, seen that Renault controls Nissan, owning more 40% of it, and Nissan controls with Mitsubishi, with majority ownership. The Renault board therefore controls all three companies, and buying Renault stock ("traded") means you are also buying Nissan and Mitsubishi. Additionall
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Point of order (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems like a thread where I can expect the usual Tesla haters to use this topic to illustrate how corrupt, lawless, out-of-control, stupid or just plain evil (probably all) Tesla is.
So I thought I would just get ahead of all that and leave this [sfconservancy.org] here:
While our preference is that companies provide adequate CCS immediately, we realize that this can be a challenging process and recognize that Tesla has struggled for years with upstreams to yield proper CCS. We believe Tesla's new approach also has merit, because it allows the entire community to discuss and contribute in public and collaboratively assist Tesla in complying with the GPL.
I have struggled with this myself in the past. What do you do when your source code reveals an API to some licensed module which is not itself open source and you are under NDA not to reveal its details? I am sure Telsa's work involves a lot of that.
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Strange how other companies are not given this benefit of the doubt on Slashdot. Other companies are simply painted as evil with a broad brush. *cough* VMWare *cough* But, hey, it’s Tesla so it’s okay that they’ve violated the GPL for many years. Because being consistent and holding them to the same standard laughably as anyone else makes you a “hater.” *rolls eyes*
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word from the Benevolent Leader is Tesla==Thought leader, your job is to disseminate the word... not to question his will.
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*cough* whataboutism *cough*
Re:Point of order (Score:4, Insightful)
Use BSD/MIT open source to build off of? I mean, I get it's hard. But building off open-source software is building off a valuable asset. I don't get to build on land and say "well, getting the deed was too hard."
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Very true. But the GP was talking about the difficulty of interacting with proprietary code (and even APIs!) from GPL code. But yeah, if you contribute back, other people help maintain it. So anything that's not worth the upkeep cost of keeping a secret should be contributed back.
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What do you do when your source code reveals an API to some licensed module which is not itself open source and you are under NDA not to reveal its details?
No one is forcing you to use the other licensed module and no one is forcing you to use the GPL software.
What you are effectively coming to is. I have this software I want to use with a proprietary license, but I really like this stuff under the GPL I can get for free, use for free and get benefits of the ongoing development process, bug fixes etc. So I've decided it's far more important to me to adhere to the proprietary license, so I'll just say fuck you to the GPL license to adhere to that.
How come the s
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Exactly. No one forced Tesla and the Prophet Elon (peace be upon him) to use Linux so, just like any other company, they deseve no “woe is me” sympathies for being a chronic, years-long GPL violator.
Don’t want to agree to the software license then don’t use the damn code.
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Great, but it’s not being a hater to call out Elon for violating the GPL for years and years.
Getting hacked? (Score:2)
As someone whose vehicle currently runs the specified version, I now happily await the hacking that my car is sure to get.
If you are blaming this on the disclosure requirement of GPL I think you are off base. One of the benefits of open source is that potential or actual exploits are discovered and fixed more quickly. So if getting your car hacked is your concerned you should be in favor of Tesla publishing all of it, not just the GPL portion.
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Not so much discovered more quickly, many bugs have remained for years undiscovered, although once discovered fixes are usually much quicker. The benefit is that everyone is at the same level - we all have equal access to the code.
If something is closed source, only a few have access to the code and most of them have goals which are contrary to yours.
Also just because something is closed source doesn't mean the code isn't out there, it just means that acquiring it is illegal and/or difficult - criminals and
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What do you do when your source code reveals an API to some licensed module which is not itself open source and you are under NDA not to reveal its details?
Offer the open source code owner some cash to licence it for you? If it's worth something to you it makes sense.
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How dare you expect Tesla to abide by the license of the software they chose to use! Don’t you know that that makes you a “hater?”
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If you can't comply with your obligation to release your code ... because proprietary ... then don't fucking start by using open source in the first place.
If the SFC is approving of Tesla's efforts then I doubt you or me is going to find fault they didn't find. Granted that they were slow and they may have started off in bad faith (not proven) but that is not where they are now. The SFC text cites NVidia and Parrot ("upstream vendors") as the problem in this case and this issue rests with them just as much as Tesla.
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No, it’s quite easy to find fault in their six years of violating the GPL. Especiallt when no other company would be given such leeway for being such a long-term violator.
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What do you do when your source code reveals an API to some licensed module which is not itself open source and you are under NDA not to reveal its details?
If you wrote the software yourself, you rewrite it to come into compliance with the license. If the software was supplied to you by a vendor, you give them an ultimatum to solve the issue within a reasonable timeframe and to indemnify you against any claims for the period where you are shipping non-compliant software. Going 6 years without a solution is not reasonable.
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Look at it this way. If you violate the licensing terms of a commercial product, that 3rd party vendor will be all over your ass with lawsuits. It's hard, but you comply because that's business.
The simple reason why a lot of companies are lax with GPL/FOSS compliance is because it's easier to get away with it. Either that, or they're flying a bit too much from the seat of their pants (typical Silicon Valley mindset).
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How come when it comes to movies and music, it's "free the content!" and "movie industry mak
Dupe (Score:3)
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curse of fridays
How do you like your NERD KING now?! (Score:2)
https://github.com/teslamotors... [github.com]
Wait for it (Score:2)
Someone is gonna get Snes9X running on there, and use car controls to run Mario Kart. Autopilot, go!
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> Someone is gonna get Snes9X running on there, and use car controls to run Mario Kart. Autopilot, go!
Or do the reverse, use Mario Kart's AI to drive the car!
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Even you know thats stupid hence the AC posting. Go away dumbass isint their a MAGA rally you can attend.
The tired "Trump supporters are idiots" refrain. Well done.
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Stopping distant (Score:3)
Maybe they'll release they're Stopping Distance Control Software source code. Seems like it could use some peer review.
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Why ? Do you think that's in the kernel ?
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https://www.consumerreports.or... [consumerreports.org]
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Yes, I'm aware of the issue.
The question was if that code is part of their Linux kernel, or if it's part of their application software that runs on top of it ? The GPL requirements only apply to modifications of existing kernel code, not user level applications.
MS owned ? (Score:1)
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Is this word salad supposed to mean something?
GPL and open source are not the same thing (Score:2)
Under most open source licenses, Tesla could keep its modifications secret from everyone, even the people it shipped the binary software to. For GPL licenses, which are free softwae licenses, they _must_ make the modificatons available. The Linux kernel is published with a GPL license. Enormous amounts of other software, such as Xen and Nagios, are _not_ and keep their modifications secret.