Are you thinking of Tesla?
Musk has stated in the past that they are explicitly not patenting things or providing IP details freely to prevent other nations from using said IP.
Musk has stated in the past that they are explicitly not patenting things or providing IP details freely to prevent other nations from using said IP.
He said he would open-source a "hyperloop patent" but that's dumb, as he didn't come up with it.
They phrase it as having 'an open-source philosophy', but what it really boils down to is that they continue to file patents[0], but choose not to use those patents in an anti-competitive manner, only 'defensively' (on their word).
Now this isn't attempting to conflate patents with 'open-source', but that ship sailed after Elon's memo regarding the concept in 2014.[1]
[0]: https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/static/pages/ppubsbasic.ht... [1]: https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you