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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.

10 of 24 comments (clear)

  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
  2. Re:ihex by jonwil · · Score: 1

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

  3. 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 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.
    4. 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.

    5. 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.

    6. 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.

  4. 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?