[FirmwareBurner]

>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?

[dongping]

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.

[therealcamino]

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.

[AaronM]

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

[FirmwareBurner]

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.

[bri3d]

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.

[jacquesm]

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.

[Kim_Bruning]

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.

[jacquesm]

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

[FirmwareBurner]

>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.

[jacquesm]

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

[jacquesm]

This probably strikes a lot closer to the real story.