I can actually comment on this which is rare. Now this isn't directly from the horses mouth I do work with the auto-industry but not directly in 'info-tainment

I can actually comment on this which is rare. Now this isn't directly from the horses mouth I do work with the auto-industry but not directly in 'info-tainment systems'. They are not going 'Open Source' any time soon, a few automakers may. And most developers would prefer it honestly. But currently Ford's System is build on Top of WindowsCE running on a PowerPC chip (which is basically custom for Ford I believe (thus the microsoft sync), I don't work in CE a lot so I don't know a ton about it). Originally the 'Sync' system was going to not only handle info-tainment oriented stuff but car diagnostic information such as Valve timing and engine firing. The problem was the scope of the project was to large, and caused way to much CPU load, I believe its roughly a 600Mhz PPC chip, very under powered for the task at hand, not to mention windowsCE is a <sarcasm> LOVELY </sarcasm> development environment to work in (I know this first hand, different dependencies for a debug-able, and non-debug-able binary just make my heart sing with joy). The problem they faced was that info-tainment system errors would cause it to short restart, or hang... just general stupidity due to first gen software problems. But when your also running your knock sensor on a different thread of your 'info-tainment' CPU, things get 'real' very very fast. How bad? Well when the computer when buggy the motor would default into 'prevent knock mode' and suddenly every single cylinder started firing 5+ degrees into the down stroke to prevent engine knock even if timing was correct3-4 degree's prior was proper timing. So they moved engine control away to a different tried and true processor. Now whats left is this really buggy thing that limps along H/A'ing media, and giving you some car starts since its still technically on the CAN bus (which industrial busses are completely open source, you can thank people from the 1970's-80's for that, not out of 'creating a community' but so you can figure out what's being sent with a 19200baud scope, and an ASCII look up chart). So its 'buggy' but the WinCE on PPC was partially sponsored by Microsoft, who gets free advertising for keeping WindowsCE alive for Ford. There are rumblings in GM to move to a Linux plate form because the developers are practically on strike over stuff like this, but GM moves very very slowly, and is more bureaucratic then the US government a times, so don't expect this to become a 'thing' in a time-span less then 10-15 years, because that's about how fast 'new' things get integrated into cars around the Big 3. I'm rooting for you guys on the second floor.