Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.

5 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. 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.