[dack]

I'm thinking through the ethics of this myself, but I think it's a reasonable argument that you can have the freedom to do what you want with things that you own _assuming you don't impact others_. The issue with a dangerous car is that it puts others at danger.

[matheusmoreira]

Responsibility. If I modify my car and that's determined to be the causal factor of an accident, it's on me.

[lm28469]

That'll make the hypothetical parents of the hypothetical kid you just ran over very happy I'm sure. "I fucked up but it's on me!" and they lived happily ever after

[matheusmoreira]

Yes? Society is actually completely fine with that arrangement. Every single year tons of people get drunk, get into accidents, get people actually killed and are held accountable for it. Yet nobody dares to infringe on their freedom to drink. They tried once and it just didn't work out.

This "give up freedom because kids" nonsense is seriously tiresome. I'm not engaging with these arguments anymore.

[jacquesm]

Somebody please think of the children.

Really, come on: you can do much better than this. The hypothetical kid might be the one that was saved because some random hacker figured out why the latest generation radar based cars keep phantom braking. That argument works both ways, and typically what is fixed stays fixed.

And of course none of these hotshot programmers would ever be seen near the following bit of code[1], which probably impacted a lot of actual children and their health in a very direct way:

     // in case of an emissions test ensure that we pass
     // with flying colors

     if (emissions_test_detected()) {
         // we're sooo environmentally conscious
         lean_burn();
     }
     else {
         // roll that coal
         regular_burn();
     }

[1] cribbed from VW/Porsche AG's internal repository ;)

[jacquesm]

Agreed, and that's an argument for open source, not against.