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Automotive is one of the many field heavily dependent on software and unable to create anything good in that. That's a good example of why we damn need to chang
by kkfx 2y ago
Automotive is one of the many field heavily dependent on software and unable to create anything good in that. That's a good example of why we damn need to change the IT landscape for a future society...
FLOSS MUST BE BY LAW, we can't accept a modern society of black boxes and this allow for collaborative development witch anyone own it's own while all other can cherry pick creating a fast enough, stable enough, safe enough stream of innovation.
Another part is electronic witch we are still champion but many industries who need electronics are TERRIBLE at it. Again open hw is mandatory to create evolvable architecture for any field.
We can't accept things like a car briked because parked in at a certain steepness and for some reasons a crapware update fails under that condition, overnight, without any human owner control. Similarly we can't accept safety features like ADAS being tied to car infotainment just because the automaker bought some ancient SoC and tablets for that purpose not knowing what to do otherwise. FLOSS prove to be a technical success, a business failure. It's time to make it the norm so business can compete in hw not in selling services.
Of course it's terribly hard but if back then at Xerox this happen it can happen again, recreating some relevant conditions like public fund for public FLOSS projects, created to serve the people not some private parties and used by any private party for commerce. This allow for a balance between the private sector needs and the public allow freedom of innovation and reducing certain level of crap for all.
- almatabata 2y agoThey had some opensource initiatives like Genivi, now Covesa see: * https://github.com/GENIVI https://github.com/GENIVI * https://github.com/COVESA https://github.com/COVESA * https://www.automotivelinux.org/ https://www.automotivelinux.org/ If you have worked on automotive projects you know they follow some kind of standards like DLT for diagnostics and logging or at least they used to. A lot of it has moved to Android Automotive now. * https://source.android.com/docs/automotive/start/what_automotive https://source.android.com/docs/automotive/start/what_automo...
- RealityVoid 2y agoSpeaking of open source AUTOSAR, there was also aarcore, that was promptly bought by Vector and they closed the implementation. https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/vector-swallows-swedish-software-company-arccore/ https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/vector-swallows-swedish-soft...
- constantcrying 2y agoFree software can be terrible as well, it solves nothing. What you want to achieve with safety critical systems is diametrically opposed to common open source development patterns. A car company can not possibly take liability for a car where some random guy has flashed some software on.
- kkfx 2y ago> Free software can be terrible as well, it solves nothing. Yes, it can, but being open, with an open toolchain, public from the start where the repo is just few SLoC, chance exists that someone else fix or even substitute it, so if a car sell because the hw/the design is good but software is bad chance exists that others fix it or even change it. Since ANY OEM of course try to grab as much as possible bad things likely disappear quickly while good one flourish. We might have terrible Android crappy ROM but also others totally different and being open it's hard to make them non interchangeable, meaning that after an initial phase there will be no VW or Rivian sw but common "distros" compatible with various cars, certified by the public to be safe for public use on the road.
- constantcrying 2y agoDeveloping software for highly integrated embedded systems requires hundreds of thousands in validation, verification and testing hardware. Wether the hardware and software are open is totally irrelevant. You can't have outsiders develop for it. >it's hard to make them non interchangeable, meaning that after an initial phase there will be no VW or Rivian sw but common "distros" compatible with various cars, certified by the public to be safe for public use on the road. This is completely delusional. This is not how hardware or software works at all.
- kkfx 2y agoUnless vehicles start to be kind of standard, like most Chinese EVs... Or like Japanese house abacus to speed up anti-seismic computations. In the end we already have some common base, at least in EU most light commercial vans for instance have a common base even if they are built by many OEMs and have various cosmetic differences. A Transit, Vito, Ducato, Master etc are the same base with different dress, I see no reasons not to do the same for cars.