“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, defendant Tesla chose to include Kubernetes in their life-critical, real-time software stack so that volunteer beta testers could also colorize their virtual car avatar. Clearly giving volunteer beta testers this crucial capability within hours of its rollout to other Tesla customers was more important than eliminating the unforeseeable possibility that—as we now know—a Linux bug didn’t follow Kubernetes’ orchestration instructions to give the vision processing microservice real time priority, and therefore miss the plaintiff stepping off the curb, leading to his becoming a permanent quadriplegic.
“We know that most software development is done on Linux servers running microservices, and therefore general industry best practices should be blindly followed rather than evaluating whether a particular scenario calls for a different approach due to unique real time processing and life safety requirements.
“In summary, it wasn’t Tesla’s fault that the Linux bug was introduced by a judgement-proof graduate student—as part of a class exercise—who has received his computer science degree from an American university and returned to his home country. So you should find for defendant Tesla and leave the plaintiff unable to make a living, feed himself, or even clean himself, because he cannot afford a full time caregiver.”