[HN Gopher] Mercedes shipping mini CDs with its vehicles to fulf...
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Mercedes shipping mini CDs with its vehicles to fulfill GPL
requirements
Author : doener
Score : 84 points
Date : 2022-06-04 17:09 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| tzs wrote:
| The title on the cover is "License Information Free and Open
| Source Software". Is the CD just copies of the licenses or does
| it also include the source?
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| If I sell a used car, do I have to pass the CD on? Especially if
| the car contains GPL Software? Or is it enough if I point to
| Daimler?
| sho_hn wrote:
| Mercedes dev here. Made me smile! :)
| Bancakes wrote:
| I thought Bosch makes ECUs. Or are those just logos
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| BMW shows this in the main screen somewhere.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Yup, we have it in the UI as well. I'm not sure these CDs are
| made anymore.
| jaxelr wrote:
| I recently got a MB and it did brought it, so at least
| latest models still do on the US.
| kzrdude wrote:
| What do you work on?
| sho_hn wrote:
| The infotainment OS / the headunit ECU.
| the_biot wrote:
| I sincerely hope that / means + not =
| sho_hn wrote:
| Make sure I didn't confuse you - ECU in this context has
| nothing to do with the engine. Headunit and infotainment
| system are adjacent terms.
| theginger wrote:
| Why do they need to do this rather than just make it downloadable
| ? Do they need to do this or are they choosing to give it out
| this way to give it to a much more limited audience, complying
| with the letter of the license perhaps not the spirit of it.
| dedward wrote:
| If they distribute a copy of the source at the same time they
| send you the binaries (in this case, the car) - then they have
| no further obligation to distribute the code. They don't have
| to maintain an online repository, nor worry about who is
| entitled to what version of the code.
|
| Under GPL, you are only entitled to the source of the binaries
| you are given.
| natas wrote:
| I will consider a Mercedes as my next car.
| google234123 wrote:
| What's wrong with providing a download link? Why do we need to
| waste more resources? 99.9% of these will end up in the trash and
| the green house gas that was emitted when making them was waste.
| falcolas wrote:
| Credit where credit is due. Well done, Mercedes, well done.
| number6 wrote:
| On the manual there was a adress printed to get the sources. So I
| mail them. Was about 5 years ago. Received a hand burned disk
| with a printed label. Nothing special on it just the usual
| suspects including Apache.
| michael1999 wrote:
| Good for them!
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Good on Daimler, and RMS.
|
| As an otherwise reasonably satisfied Onyx BOOX owner, I'd very
| much like to see the company fulfilling its GPL and other
| licensing obligations.
| blamazon wrote:
| Tangentially related:
|
| "Why is your email in my car?"
|
| https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2018/02/16/why-is-your-email-in-...
| h2odragon wrote:
| "car computers" that were too complicated to work on were already
| a thing then, so yes in spirit even if not for this specific
| case.
|
| I'd say its a start but needs the car's full source _and_ build
| environment. I wanna do a 'make world' or whatever and replace
| the cars' firmware at home.
| salawat wrote:
| As do I. However, the friction that no one wants to part with
| (regulator or manufacturer) is the assurance that "nothing has
| been tinkered with by anyone who can't be cited". And dealers
| will balk because of (to them) the loss of ability to
| meaningfully bin different trims.
|
| I've started to grok the industrial/government complex, and it
| really annoys the crap out of me. It's an attempt to do an end
| run around the consumer by doing de facto centralized control
| through companies, instead of actually implementing things in
| such a way as the entire lifecycle from production to EoL is
| able to be sampled and assessed.
|
| Like, take diesel emissions.
|
| We have a farce of a test suite that's done on a design by
| design basis. Then that is locked in and sssumed for that model
| of vehicle. This is exactly why people converged on defeat
| devices instead of actually going for compliance.
|
| Imagine if you will, a world where you can reconfigure your
| firmware, load it, test it on your property, fire off a copy to
| a regulator to get plugged into a test bed and put through the
| paces, and get a result back with an adjusted fee to reflect
| the difference in performance against standards for those
| changes.
|
| You have the option to tool differently. You can tinker, you
| can even find configurations better than the original
| implementer. You also get a record of change for
| insurance/warranty auditing purposes. (Though again, I'm
| squeamish on making life easier for manufacturers in that
| regard as long as they continue to use services like
| https://cccis.com/)
|
| There are levels of corporate surveillance I'm not willing to
| accommodate.
| lokar wrote:
| In the world of "software defined x", a lot of software has
| to be verified and approved by a regulator of some kind.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I'm sure insurance companies would love that too (as an excuse
| to deny claims)
| jancsika wrote:
| So where's the Free Software/Open Source car in the year 2022?
|
| Maybe in the U.S. we can build one out of corn?
|
| C'mon, who's with me, "Hackers News"? Let's hack!
| bdcravens wrote:
| https://www.openmotors.co/download/
| jancsika wrote:
| Ooh, I owe you one beer for this link. :)
| jancsika wrote:
| Hm, this looks like the busybox open source cars. Is there
| a distro with like a window manager? :)
| drewzero1 wrote:
| There's the Locost if you're into Motif.
| http://www.locostusa.com/
| kevinmgranger wrote:
| Finally, the "you wouldn't download a car" joke has become a
| reality.
| Scarblac wrote:
| So is it possible, if you find some bug in the car's software, to
| fix it using this source and run the fixed code in the car?
|
| Because that was RMS' original motivation, that he couldn't fix
| the bug in his printer.
| indrora wrote:
| No.
|
| The GPL doesn't have a (meaningful) mandate that the user be
| able to replace the software that is under the GPL. Only that
| the source be made available.
|
| This was fine in the 70s/80s when mainframes were the ruling
| class. Roughly a femtosecond after the market for embedded
| machines came along where the person setting up the system
| wasn't expected to have to compile the runtime environment,
| that died. Somewhere around THERAC-1 and the Altair.
| sdkgjajggaf wrote:
| GPL v3 was specifically written to address this. See:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization#GNU_GPLv3
|
| That's why quite a few new products are still using old GPL
| v2 licensed software.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Seither using GPLv2 or replacements using BSD software (see
| for instance how MacOS replaced GPL Software)
| tzs wrote:
| It should be noted that the Tivoization clause in GPLv3 is
| pretty narrow. It only covers software that you acquire in
| the same transaction in which you acquire the locked down
| hardware.
| oliwarner wrote:
| So it _would_ apply here if the cars software were under
| GPL v3?
| em-bee wrote:
| that would be good enough to apply to cars
| onphonenow wrote:
| No, they need to make the software available, and you can use
| it in your own car if you will share your changes as well. But
| you can't run the "fixed" code in the car (ie, disable rev
| limits / speed restrictions etc). That said, "tuners" do
| sometimes flash updated settings, but it normally voids the
| warranty.
| User23 wrote:
| It might also violate your local emissions laws, among
| others.
| salawat wrote:
| You can run the "fixed" code even if you don't share your
| changes.
|
| But if you share your changed code's binaries, you are bound
| to share the source for them.
|
| No comment on street legality.
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