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Tesla Releases Some of Its Software To Comply With Open-Source Licenses (sfconservancy.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the are-you-happy-now dept.

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.

24 comments

  1. something a bit less vague... by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 4, Informative

    https://github.com/teslamotors...
    https://github.com/teslamotors...

    --
    You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
    1. Re:something a bit less vague... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      First make billions, then worry about GPL compliance. Where have we heard this story before? What's the point of this if they've already made their money over it? It's already too late. They don't care.

      I walk into too many companies literally violating the GPL by just blatantly stealing code and using it for their projects. Lots of enterprise software ripping GPL code because their customers don't care. I can show you industrial machines running this stuff, including CNC machines and their touch screens. There are a lot of people that have made millions because of open source.

    2. Re:something a bit less vague... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can show you...

      Don't show us, show the Conservancy. Report these violations if you really run into them so often as you claim. If you can fill out a form to comment on a Slashdot article, surely you can send the Conservancy an email.

  2. ihex by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The first link is all the build files - nothing else. The second is just ihex files. No source.

    Someone post RMS' email so I can stir some good real controversial soap opera battle between him and Musk.

    1. Re:ihex by jonwil · · Score: 1

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

  3. Re:Musk can go fuck himself. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ELON MUSK IS A RELIGION

  4. Re:Musk can go fuck himself. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Standard debate concerning Tesla:

    Person A: Analysis, data, news, information...
    Person B: "You're just a cultist who wants to suck Musk's cock!"

  5. Re:Musk can go fuck himself. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That’s a good joke. Too bad for you it’s the opposite. Any facts, data and news that isn’t sucking Musk’s cock or 100% always on Tesla’s side is brushed off by the cult of Musk.

  6. Re:Musk can go fuck himself. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ELON MUSK IS A RELIGION

    So is Richard Stallman

    Now we get to see what happens when two religions butt heads.

    Ta. I'm off to make an extra big batch of popcorn. This should be fun.

  7. Re:Musk can go fuck himself. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ahem, you seem to have mispelled "cunt"

  8. RMS email address by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In the old days it used to be rms@prep.ai.mit.edu. I wonder if that still forwards correctly.

  9. Please donate to Conservancy. by Jeremy+Allison+-+Sam · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...

    1. Re:Please donate to Conservancy. by nnull · · Score: 2

      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 anything, nobody says anything. Employees don't say anything because they are bound by their ridiculous NDA's.

    2. Re:Please donate to Conservancy. by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 2

      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.

    3. Re: Please donate to Conservancy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please consider, for someone who has been stealing from the taxpayers to give to the rich, an injunction against sales. A CNC machine makes a rral product, but my work stolen for rich people's signaling their richness is just unacceptable. And yes, I donated today.

    4. Re:Please donate to Conservancy. by sg_oneill · · Score: 2

      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 to. And the vast majority of code written, generally is in house for in house use only, with the possible exception of website javascript.

      But I've worked in places where we're just writing inhouse scripts for automating little tasks and I've asked the boss if I could sanitize the script and open source it because its really interesting and hasnt got anything thats a trade secret or patentable, and when it comes to licenses I explain them and the GPL scares the hell out of them, but they like the BSD because its pretty much just public domain with a few legal protections thrown in. But really theres no reason to fear the GPL, as long as your not being shifty, and theres absolutely nothing to say the version of the code you use internally on your own machines needs to be exposed.

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
    5. Re:Please donate to Conservancy. by booboo · · Score: 1

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

    6. Re:Please donate to Conservancy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've also seen a lot of ignorance on the meaning of the GPL with some seeming to think you have to give away all your code in toto. And this was at a senior level, although not where I worked. It left me pretty dumbstruck for a few moments.

    7. Re:Please donate to Conservancy. by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      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" thing much easier to explain to everyone - GPL and BSD and other licenses are unlike commercial licenses, which seek to reduce your rights from what the law gives you. Instead, you have an alternate path - you can choose standard "All Rights Reserved" as given by the law, or you can choose additional benefits if you agree to additional terms, as a win-win style solution.

      Of course, GPLv3 does have companies scared, and good companies have established open-source processes that basically identify all open-source software used within an organization, its licenses, and whether or not it goes in the final product and thus needs to have a special source release. Yes, these processes are a lot of extra paperwork, but they help clarify things. Often there are blanket policies like "No GPLv3 software allowed, at all" which reduces the paperwork some.

    8. Re:Please donate to Conservancy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No contract can stop someone from reporting an illegal act, though it still might kill your career if you report it.

    9. Re:Please donate to Conservancy. by tepples · · Score: 1

      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.

    10. Re:Please donate to Conservancy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (...)

      But really theres no reason to fear the GPL, as long as your not being shifty, and theres absolutely nothing to say the version of the code you use internally on your own machines needs to be exposed.

      "There's this huge and complicated licence agreement, but don't read it, rest assured that as long as you're nice, nothing bad will happen".

      Yeah, sounds like a great legal advice. Companies are bound to take it, in troves. ...and then get targetted by people like Software Freedom Conservancy.

  10. Reabsorption by Grady+Martin · · Score: 1

    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?