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I've thought about this a couple of times. In a perfect world, you want to be able to safely ~hack~investigate every part of your car, including the logic that

by theK 3y ago

I've thought about this a couple of times. In a perfect world, you want to be able to safely ~hack~investigate every part of your car, including the logic that controls its servos, hydraulics, propulsion, etc. So the whole OS and controler firmware should be open source, right? It would be awesome but problems arise with qualifying which "devices" this should apply to. Are all self propelled four whelers cars? What about three wheelers? And why make a distinction on wheels? And if propulsion is the driver then I can see dealers suddenly selling you (proprietary) carriages and an added service of mountig an engine on them. Soon enough you come to the point where absolutely everything needs to be open source. And while I would be happy to be part of that world, I don't really see a tangible way towards it. It just seems there is too much vested interest in defending the right for proprietary software. The one avenue where there might be a sliver of hope for such an idea is maybe commercial aviation. That field is already overly regulated so it might be doable. There still will be a huge loophole in terms of military vehicles but it still seems vastly more rwalistic than forcing all car companies to opensource everything.

dontlaugh 3y ago
Vehicle categories already exist in all countries, for the purposes of registration, taxation, safety, etc.
eesmith 3y ago
> In a perfect world, you want to be able to safely ~hack~investigate every part of your car I really don't think the standard "safely ~hack~investigate~" is reasonable, for both practical and policy reasons. By focusing on an imaginary perfect world, you take focus away from the real word, where we know people do unsafe hacks to their car already, even without touching software, like https://honda-tech.com/articles/crash-kills-man-in-home-built-civic-exocar/ https://honda-tech.com/articles/crash-kills-man-in-home-buil... . There is no way to prevent those unsafe hacks that wouldn't also prevent huge numbers of safe hacks which people accept and support as reasonable, and place a huge and undue amount of control into the auto manufacturer. In the old days of Ma Bell, AT&T tried to prevent Hush-A-Phone from selling a mouthpiece cover designed to make it harder for others to overhear your conversation. AT&T argued that a foreign attachment like that could damage the phone network. A decade later AT&T sued Carterfone for selling an acoustic coupler to a radio, using the same justification of possible damage. AT&T lost both cases, and the latter case is why early personal computer modems were acoustically, not electrically, coupled. We should not extend that same power to auto manufacturers. > but problems arise with qualifying which "devices" this should apply to Which is why this sort of legislation is done in steps. Focus on where it makes the most sense, get experience on how useful it is and what the negative consequences are, and use that experience to judge if anything else should be included. That's why the Motor Vehicle Owners' Right to Repair Act (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicle_Owners'_Right_to_Repair_Act) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicle_Owners'_Right_to... focuses only on motor vehicles, and not the right to repair all machinery and devices.
- theK 3y ago
  > safely ~hack~investigate I was more thinking in terms of: 1. Hacking something close source is inherently "unsafe" as you have to reverse engineer it, fuzz it or do something other that could randomly backfire. 2. Hacking something open source is safe(er) as in, you can see the code and the developers intent, maybe even some insightful commentary. Also, there might be an argument about open source projects being more easy to replace pieces of as you typically can see the whole build stack.
  - eesmith 3y ago
    The safety goals you want in your perfect world are so far beyond what is practical that it seems irrelevant in a discussion about a mandate that auto software be open source. Please remember that "open source" means access to the source code, plus the right to modify it, plus the right to redistribute it without requiring additional permissions from the copyright holders, plus no restrictions on who may use the software (other than those required by law). You can have close source with access to the source (often called 'source available'), and even with the right to modify and use those modifications. A license which is "for noncommercial use only" or "not for use by the military" is not open source, even if the source can otherwise be freely used, modified, and redistributed. That said, having the source code in any form does not mean things are no longer 'inherently "unsafe"'. Device drivers are notoriously finicky and depend, for example, on the precise timing of hardware vs. software. Reading the source, even with comments, may not be enough to assume modifications are safe, perhaps because it's obvious to an expert (which you are not) or because the original authors were not aware of the issue. Nor does open source guarantee you can reproduce the build. The auto manufacturer may use a compiler with different behavior than your compilers. But hoseja called for open source, not reproducible builds of the open source software, so inherently accepts there will be some risks. Certainly there's less risk with reproducible builds of the open source software, but as I said, these changes are best done in steps. There's no need for the huge step you want in your perfect world. Instead, mandate open source, get experience, and use that experience to guide future changes to public policy. That's how laws generally work.
    - 3y ago

by theK 3y ago

dontlaugh 3y ago

Vehicle categories already exist in all countries, for the purposes of registration, taxation, safety, etc.

eesmith 3y ago

> In a perfect world, you want to be able to safely ~hack~investigate every part of your car I really don't think the standard "safely ~hack~investigate~" is reasonable, for both practical and policy reasons. By focusing on an imaginary perfect world, you take focus away from the real word, where we know people do unsafe hacks to their car already, even without touching software, like https://honda-tech.com/articles/crash-kills-man-in-home-built-civic-exocar/ https://honda-tech.com/articles/crash-kills-man-in-home-buil... . There is no way to prevent those unsafe hacks that wouldn't also prevent huge numbers of safe hacks which people accept and support as reasonable, and place a huge and undue amount of control into the auto manufacturer. In the old days of Ma Bell, AT&T tried to prevent Hush-A-Phone from selling a mouthpiece cover designed to make it harder for others to overhear your conversation. AT&T argued that a foreign attachment like that could damage the phone network. A decade later AT&T sued Carterfone for selling an acoustic coupler to a radio, using the same justification of possible damage. AT&T lost both cases, and the latter case is why early personal computer modems were acoustically, not electrically, coupled. We should not extend that same power to auto manufacturers. > but problems arise with qualifying which "devices" this should apply to Which is why this sort of legislation is done in steps. Focus on where it makes the most sense, get experience on how useful it is and what the negative consequences are, and use that experience to judge if anything else should be included. That's why the Motor Vehicle Owners' Right to Repair Act (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicle_Owners'_Right_to_Repair_Act) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Vehicle_Owners'_Right_to... focuses only on motor vehicles, and not the right to repair all machinery and devices.

theK 3y ago
> safely ~hack~investigate I was more thinking in terms of: 1. Hacking something close source is inherently "unsafe" as you have to reverse engineer it, fuzz it or do something other that could randomly backfire. 2. Hacking something open source is safe(er) as in, you can see the code and the developers intent, maybe even some insightful commentary. Also, there might be an argument about open source projects being more easy to replace pieces of as you typically can see the whole build stack.
- eesmith 3y ago
  The safety goals you want in your perfect world are so far beyond what is practical that it seems irrelevant in a discussion about a mandate that auto software be open source. Please remember that "open source" means access to the source code, plus the right to modify it, plus the right to redistribute it without requiring additional permissions from the copyright holders, plus no restrictions on who may use the software (other than those required by law). You can have close source with access to the source (often called 'source available'), and even with the right to modify and use those modifications. A license which is "for noncommercial use only" or "not for use by the military" is not open source, even if the source can otherwise be freely used, modified, and redistributed. That said, having the source code in any form does not mean things are no longer 'inherently "unsafe"'. Device drivers are notoriously finicky and depend, for example, on the precise timing of hardware vs. software. Reading the source, even with comments, may not be enough to assume modifications are safe, perhaps because it's obvious to an expert (which you are not) or because the original authors were not aware of the issue. Nor does open source guarantee you can reproduce the build. The auto manufacturer may use a compiler with different behavior than your compilers. But hoseja called for open source, not reproducible builds of the open source software, so inherently accepts there will be some risks. Certainly there's less risk with reproducible builds of the open source software, but as I said, these changes are best done in steps. There's no need for the huge step you want in your perfect world. Instead, mandate open source, get experience, and use that experience to guide future changes to public policy. That's how laws generally work.
  - 3y ago