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Comment by bri3d | Hacker News Reader

The biggest excuse is much more reasonable (albeit annoying, the same reason why most board support firmware isn't open source): ECUs are built using code generation from models (ASCET, LabView/Simulink, etc.) on top of 10 layers of proprietary middleware and compilers, using components supplied by hundreds of consulting firms, so an open-source effort would have to be a paradigm shift in the industry from the ground up. It's not something Porsche could decide to do on their own.

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Well, they could dedicate a team to it if they were serious about it and work with open source advocates to make it all work.

I'd rather have a tarball with hard to parse code and weird tooling than nothing at all. But - as I said - I have no illusions about this and see it as a marketing effort.

In my experience it's fairly common even for the manufacturer to not have full access to the code, let alone permission to open source it. I don't think it makes it merely a "marketing effort" if they avoid that.

Yes, I'm aware of that. Which is why my assumption that this would be a red herring was born out. As long as Freescale and Bosch are in control I don't see any of this changing.

Honestly just documenting the APIs the different components use to talk to one another would be incredibly helpful. There are so many things that could be done in the pursuit of openness that absolutely won't be.

I did some work on a toolchain used in automotive (and other industries) to proof^W prove certain software properties related to safety. This is already a massive effort, expensive to build & maintain - but after all a small cog in the whole machine. (Using Rust over subset-of-C would deprecate maybe half of that work; at most I'd guess). The hypothetical team would take a decade or two to replicate just that cog.

Yes, having the whole machinery available as FOSS would be awesome and I'd like to live & work in a world in which this is the norm (Hello, Star Trek?). But all this requires very talented people, many of whom studied and racked up student debt, want something to eat and a place to stay. We first need another paradigm shift to make this kind niche open work sustainable.

Oh, and if you ever find yourself in a car with critical components not checked with that kind of toolchain: I strongly recommended getting out of there asap ;-) For all the excellent people building that software, there will always be some who'd be better writing mobile apps instead (or anything else that cannot kill people).

(btw: You asked me about the setpoints of the 12k 3P Deye inverters a while ago: Seems to work nice for me with my basic "just the inverter + PV + battery" setup. Though some people report trouble when using AC coupling with another inverter; in that case the Deye seems to swing more around the setpoint).

The main thing I think manufacturers would try to avoid is to be embarrassed by the kind of shenanigans that helped VW to pass emissions inspections when in fact they shouldn't have. And that's proof enough to me that manufacturers don't give a rats ass about safety or the environment if it means more money for them.

I realize how complex those toolchains are (and how many parties would have to sign off on a release) but what amazes me more is that we are willing to trust these manufacturers on their say-so. Because chances are their interests and our interests are not aligned, as the diesel scandal has clearly proven. And I would not be at all surprised if there were more such scandals but we just haven't uncovered them.

Given what the Asahilinux people and some other very talented individuals have done in the FOSS movement, combined with the fact that half the world is powered by open source including for many mission critical and safety critical applications I'm pretty sure we could handle vehicles as well.

Nice to see your setup works well!

Volkswagen (Porsche's parent company) certainly has the scale to make this happen. Seems like its entirely a corporate culture issue, same as what plagues Volkswagen's EVs and newer cars with terrible infotainment systems.

>Volkswagen (Porsche's parent company) certainly has the scale to make this happen.

Yeah, but VW and Porsche are into selling cars not OSS so their priorities are aligned with that.

Think of it from the bean-counter's perspective, which run these companies: why would they invest resources into sharing your SW as OSS if that's not gonna sell more cars?

I think you can make that same argument for many large companies that contribute to OSS though.

Contributing to OSS is one thing. Open sourcing your existing closed source internal SW is another and is hugely risky legally as that could have many faults and bugs that could get them sued if discovered.

Toyota had the unintended acceleration lawsuit during which an external audit discovered several bugs and deficiencies with their SW, testing, and dev process.

Knowing this, why would any car manufacturer air their dirty laundry in public for the sake of OSS? Their lawyers would definitely advise them to never OSS anything internal out of the kindness of their hearts as that could backfire spectacularly.

Hiding safety flaws? That doesn't sound like a very healthy safety culture.

This sounds like a good reason to have a little government regulation to align incentives with safety interests.

>Hiding safety flaws? That doesn't sound like a very healthy safety culture.

Welcome to the real world of corporate profit making. You must be new here.

Just the diesel scandal alone... (different badge, same manufacturer, and Porsche with their Cayenne diesel models was definitely affected).

It'll never happen because regulators don't get involved except on the most abstract level (say: a recall with a proposed fix).

I strongly doubt this is the main reason. I think it's simpler and just like most hardware: there's no perception that open source adds value, and re-negotiating IP agreements with hundreds of sub-vendors would be unreasonably expensive in and of itself even if the vendors were amenable to open source. We see the same thing in plenty of non-safety critical hardware areas: board support packages, device drivers, graphics stacks, and so on. There's no perception that open source adds value in the hardware industry at large.

The real shocker would be how incredibly crappy it all is. But yes, licensing is a huge part of the problem. But that also happens to help the manufacturers who really wouldn't want to open this stuff up to scrutiny anyway.

If only because there might be a significant number of findings about accidents that turned out to have been caused by a malfunctioning vehicle after all when right now these are attributed to the driver.

This probably strikes a lot closer to the real story.

To commoditize your complements, so that you don't have to pay license fee to your suppliers.

In a way, the German OEMs have been trying to do so, but mostly via different standardization efforts (OpenSCENARIO for example) so that they can easily change suppliers.

Sure, but is the owner's experience really a complement? I don't think it is. It's a huge part of what they are selling.

Curious, who are the main consulting firms active here?

Bertrandt, IAV, EDAG, to name a few (link in German):

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entwicklungsdienstleister#Top_...

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