[HN Gopher] The German automotive industry wants to develop open...
___________________________________________________________________
The German automotive industry wants to develop open-source
software together
Author : smartmic
Score : 82 points
Date : 2025-06-24 20:07 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vda.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vda.de)
| ognarb wrote:
| Mercedes Benz is already for example using KWin from KDE as
| Wayland compositor and likely many other open source components.
| So this sort of move is not without precedent.
|
| It's a smart move to do so instead of switching to Android Auto
| and loosing control of one of the most important component of the
| experience of the car.
| danogentili wrote:
| Kia is also using a Linux Wayland system on an x86-64 Intel
| machine (with an iGPU) with an (excellent) QT5 UI for their
| infontainment system
| Bluestein wrote:
| QT is still a thing, eh? Wow.-
| greenavocado wrote:
| https://try.qt.io/projects/outrun-ivi
| eurleif wrote:
| Wow: I run KDE with Wayland on my PC, and given the instability
| I've experienced, I'm surprised it's suitable for a high-
| reliability environment like a car. I suppose that it being a
| more controlled environment may help, but even still, I wonder
| how stable it actually is.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| Year of the Linux car!
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| This is basically AUTOSAR reinvented, by mostly the same
| companies. That's not a bad thing, AUTOSAR is a flaming pile of
| trash and this is at least picking a better foundation. It
| doesn't solve the core issue though, which is that the auto
| industry struggles to understand software.
| bluGill wrote:
| AUTOSAR had some good foundations, but consultants who didn't
| understand anything (as normal) over sold what it did and then
| sold companies on a lot of bad ideas because management didn't
| understand the real problems.
|
| If your program is hello world complexity then it isn't worth
| the cost to make it reusable, just write and maintain 100
| different copies - meanwhile elsewhere there are only 5 copies
| of the transmission controls and since it is only 5 it didn't
| get to the top of the list to fix redundancy - but those
| controls are very complex and making one version would be well
| wroth the effort.
| throwaway390209 wrote:
| No, AUTOSAR is a flaming pile of shit. What good ideas did
| AUTOSAR have? Reusable software components? That is the idea
| every single software engineer or computer scientist had
| ever, it is completely unusable and I have never, ever seen a
| MISRA C compliant anything if it is generated by AUTOSAR
| (well, unless you count a deviation list longer than the
| ARXML used to generate the crap).
|
| "AUTOSAR is a good idea, it works in theory", nope, much like
| communism if your theory does not work and continues to fall
| flat on its face it is a terrible theory. No one would say a
| theory of gravity that predicted you would turn into a
| unicorn if your really wanted to and dropped a ball at the
| same time had merits.
|
| Here is an idea to make the automotive industry slightly
| better, just an incremental improvement. DBC files are used
| to specify CAN interfaces, they allow big endian and little
| endian messages within THE SAME MESSAGE, which is madness.
| Why not pick an endianess, just one, it does not matter
| which, do not make things generic (I have nightmares of
| German mechanical engineers writing software saying the word
| "generic"). Do that an you have actually achieved something.
| I am not even suggesting specifying what messages numbers do
| what, or what signals they contain for a particular ECU
| (which would make literal components reusable). The
| automotive industry is riddled with bad, terrible, software.
|
| I do not know how you blame consultants, the German
| automotive industry sabotaged themselves.
|
| I have no idea how it can be used in safety critical
| software, because no one understands it. I guess they just
| test the fuck out of it.
|
| Sorry for the poorly thought out rant...AUTOSAR makes
| me...emotional.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I feel you, I really do, I've been where you are, but I've
| seem metastatic automotive code bases that were non-Autosar
| that would make you tear your eyeballs out. So, trust me,
| there is _worse_ than Autosar. AUTOSAR is a pain to work
| with, but, at least, to their credit, once you configure
| the goddamn' modules they do work. You don't know how,
| because observability sucks. But the modules work.
|
| I agree with your point about incremental improvements. And
| I agree that reducing useless options would improve the
| status quo.
| throwaway390209 wrote:
| Thanks for the sympathetic reply, but luckily I left the
| automotive industry a while ago, and I did it because of
| AUTOSAR. I honestly felt uncomfortable working on AUTOSAR
| projects, and I mean ethically, they were safety critical
| components I was working on and no one understood
| anything, being able to understand a system is a hard
| prerequisite to being able to sign off on it, and I could
| not work under those conditions with a clear conscious.
|
| I will have to take your word on seeing projects worse
| than AUTOSAR ones, I have seen terrible non-AUTOSAR
| projects, but the only good projects I have ever seen in
| the automotive industry have been non-AUTOSAR ones.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| AUTOSAR is a spec, this seems to tackle an actual
| implementation.
|
| As the other commenter said AUTOSAR had some good ideas, but
| now it has too much cruft and it's hard to decrusity it. If
| they trimmed 80% of the standard, had an actual open source
| reference implementation, overhauled the tooling to make it not
| suck and added solid observability capabilities and did
| something about the god awful RTE experience, it would be
| pretty good. The API's are sane, interactions make sense.
| okokwhatever wrote:
| Of course, because after years overpricing for cars nobody needed
| they've starter to see China is eating their market share. If you
| bought a VW, and Audi or a MB in the last 7-8 years you know what
| I mean.
| Teever wrote:
| Is China eating their market share with open source?
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Eh, kind of, but not really. They do have some open source
| initiatives here and there, but OSS is not the
| differentiator. They are just better executers, IMO.
| okokwhatever wrote:
| Not because open source but for not joining forces as a
| german industry and fighting each other to prevail by
| themselves meanwhile the chinese were using their technology
| (mostly sent to China by the german automakers) to produce
| cheaper and better cars (EVs)
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm not sure if there's a substantial dent in existing
| markets, but I would guess that as the Chinese market (the
| largest in the world) continues to expand, non-chinese makers
| will have a lower share of the overall global market. I don't
| think it has anything to do with open source though.
| v5v3 wrote:
| >"overpricing for cars nobody needed"
|
| If the car sells, it is priced at what the customer feels is
| reasonable. It is not for you to moan as you disagree.
|
| And before the Chinese, there were the Koreans and others who
| came challenging so it's never been for easy.
|
| I am objectively speaking, I only buy used cars after the major
| depreciation has happened.
| mqus wrote:
| > If the car sells
|
| But it doesn't[1]. And people agree, the main reason is: the
| cars (esp. the lower price ranges) are too expensive.
|
| [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/brutal-financial-results-
| vol...
| hengheng wrote:
| As always there is a difference between what course of action is
| widely agreed to make sense for everyone involved, and what
| course of action is in agreement with the structure of the
| corporation. The Audi/ Cariad disaster being just one example.
|
| I'd like to see some insight on whether this has a realistic
| chance of being the winning bet within the companies involved. So
| far it sounds too obviously useful to win the politics game.
| mathverse wrote:
| Everybody just uses QT Auto and they create horrendous interfaces
| plus they use cheap electronics with not enough resources to
| power all of that eye candy.
|
| The chinese can create good looking and useful UIs and they can
| even go deeper in the stack.
| bluGill wrote:
| in every case I know of moving to qt greatly increased the
| quality of the ui. Though touchscreens in a car still suck
| everywhere.
|
| cheap electronics will stand up to use in a car for years -
| something the fastest computers often fail at. I'm under NDA so
| I can't give more details.
|
| Those cheap often boot instantly while more powerful ones often
| need a minute by the time everything is initialized.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I had presumed that car GUI/Infotainment systems were just in
| sleep or hibernated when the car is off, to shorten the
| startup time when switched back on.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Some part of it, yes. In the systems I worked on you had
| the "AC" - Automotive controller that was in a sort of deep
| sleep. But the "CG" - graphics controller was completely
| shut down.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| The infotainment is just a small part of a car. It's the thing
| you interact with, sure but it's just the tip of the iceberg.
| fidotron wrote:
| The serious move would be centralizing their budgets they have
| for developing these functions in a new independent company, and
| until that happens it's likely to get stuck in analysis
| paralysis.
|
| If in doubt take a look at what they're referring to:
| https://eclipse-score.github.io/
| mrtksn wrote:
| There's one area where EU software industry is on the cutting
| edge: The gaming industry.
|
| Again, the platforms are all American but Europeans know how to
| make kick ass games that are delightful and awe inspiring.
| French, Polish, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, so many legendary people
| are from Europe.
|
| They should hire game developer to guide the user experience and
| listen to them very carefully.
| alephnerd wrote:
| The salary difference between American and European Game Devs
| isn't as significant as it is for other segments of SWE.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Was this because the game dev salaries were low in US or high
| in Europe?
| alephnerd wrote:
| The former.
|
| Meanwhile, a lot of the higher value work such as in
| Engines tends to pay pretty high - for example, Epic Games
| pays SWEs and PMs in the $200-400K TC range, but this is
| overwhelmingly in the US. Similar story with Unity despite
| originally being European, but shifting to the US in the
| 2000s.
| veqq wrote:
| Low in the US
| exiguus wrote:
| Nearly one year ago the German federal government passes an
| amendment to law on preferential use of open source software.
|
| Now they push projects like OpenDesk[1] to fully replace MS
| Office (365) and OpenCode[2] where they open-source all software
| that is build with public money.
|
| In my view, this has led to the German economy having more
| confidence in open source, and that open source can be used and
| maintained as a model for software over a period of 5-10 or even
| more years. Instead of buying licences and hoping that the
| manufacturers will maintain the software for at least 5 years and
| provide updates. In addition, there is the realisation, not least
| as a result of the change in the law and the current global
| political situation, that sovereignty is a very important factor.
|
| [1] https://www.opendesk.eu/en
|
| [2] https://opencode.de/en && https://gitlab.opencode.de/explore
| analognoise wrote:
| To me the "opendesk" effort looks like a lot of not-open source
| "licensed" software ("with less than x% closed source") and a
| handful of wrappers around other people's open source software
| (diagrams.net wrapped as cryptpad, for example). In fact they
| recommend the "enterprise edition" which is NOT fully open
| source, right?
|
| It says all the right words and has a flashy landing page, but
| doesn't seem very open or impressive; am I wrong in my
| assessment?
| exiguus wrote:
| In my understanding it is fully open source and it's source
| code is available on OpenCode [1]. OpenDesk use nextcloud,
| Open-Xchange, Element and so on. And it actively contribute
| to this software. In my understanding, the enterprise
| edition, is the non-self-hosted version of [1].
|
| What is the not-open source software used in OpenDesk?
| Because your example: cryptepad[2] is GNU Affero General
| Public License. And diagrams.net might look similar, but also
| LibreOffice looks similar to MS office.
|
| [1] https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/opendesk
|
| [2] https://cryptpad.org/
| giantg2 wrote:
| "...that accelerates the transition to the software-defined
| vehicle."
|
| Ew. I want more buttons and less software but better (most car
| software, visable to the user at least, is junk).
| v5v3 wrote:
| "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"
|
| The Chinese car firms are coming for them, so they are banding
| together.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| Open source is great but as a German I think our leaders are so
| out of their fucking mind (and out of touch with reality) that it
| will definitely fail.
| jll29 wrote:
| 1. Personally, I don't want software in my car, I want physical
| buttons and switches (then I can control my car without looking
| at any distractive screens).
|
| 2. The German car industry already successfully teamed up on
| sharing map data (https://www.here.com/).
|
| 3. However, while this may work for Libre Office installs in a
| city administration and (non-critical) car infotainment software,
| this likely cannot work for the most important automotive control
| software, due to the legal responsibility of the car manufacturer
| (they would need to review/audit all changes of open source
| contributors line by line, patch by patch) - because bugs can
| cost lives there.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Do you think they audit line by line every piece of SW in a
| safety critical ECU? Because if yes, I have a bridge to sell
| you. They do many many things to insure the SW works, but there
| are a bunch of corners in the SW very few people poke at.
|
| And anyways, merely auditing I serious doubt would be
| effective. (LGTM, ship it!)
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Regarding the need to review and audit all changes, it doesn't
| matter whether it is open source or closed source. I think the
| idea is, that various car makers collaborate, not necessarily
| patches from outside of those organizations.
| thepaulmcbride wrote:
| Notably Volkswagen is missing
| davet91 wrote:
| Makes sense as they invested billions into Rivian to get access
| to their software.
| mqus wrote:
| Volkswagen _is_ there as well, just not a quote from them.
| Source: the MoU PDF
| padjo wrote:
| Volkswagen absolutely sucks at software. For example, it took
| me over an hour of infuriating guesswork to add a second user
| on my car. Then once a new user was added basically nothing
| actually takes account of who is logged in. I was hoping it
| would at least remember some settings but nope, it literally
| just changes the name displayed on the infotainment system when
| you start the car.
| lordfrito wrote:
| This doesn't surprise me. Here's my hot take, having worked
| building these kinds of ecosystems in automotive and related
| industries (RV), and also working with German automotive/caravan
| companies in those spaces.
|
| 1) They don't want to invest in building vehicle software
| ecosystems as it's expensive, time consuming, and not exactly in
| their wheel house. Wireless and cloud connectivity just aren't
| their language.
|
| 2) They don't want to work with existing proprietary off the
| shelf ecosystem solutions -- they feel that because it's "their
| vehicles" they should "own" the technology and IP. They don't
| want vendor lock in, so they avoid existing proprietary solutions
| they can't "take over". And by "take over" I mean "have the
| vendor give their proprietary stack to them for free, so they can
| then share it with their other suppliers".
|
| 3) They expect the vendor base to "partner" to develop "open"
| software stacks for free -- which most vendors aren't keen on
| doing as there is little upside for the vendor to spend their own
| internal NRE building a system that their competitors benefit
| from and can quickly undercut them on. They generally refuse to
| pay for the development of a stack that they can own and build
| upon.
|
| The root cause seems to be magical thinking from the higher ups -
| "Hey connectivity stuff is everywhere, it can't be hard, why
| should we pay for this?"
|
| They don't want to build it. They don't see the value in paying
| for it. So of course open source is the obvious solution. Hey,
| just have the nerds build it! They love doing that kind of work
| for free.
| qrios wrote:
| All three points are valid for every platform provider, and so
| for car manufactures.
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| Most automotive software is targeting real time operating systems
| from what I understand. Their are some Linux projects built
| around RTOS that are open source, but current Linux OS is mainly
| focused on non RTOS systems.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Yes and no. There's a very significant shift underway to move a
| lot of functionality to Linux. It's very likely that you have
| at least one kernel somewhere in your car if it was made in the
| last 5 years. It's essentially guaranteed if your car has ADAS
| functionality.
|
| Traditional RTOS' are for the most basic, safety critical
| functionality because the cost of certified (and even QM) code
| is so high and the tools available are so primitive.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-06-24 23:00 UTC)