Sadly, I'm not certain that Tesla is in violation of the GPL,
They are in violation of the GPL. The Linux copyright holders are already pursuing it, but I was warned that these cases generally take 5 years or more. And Tesla hired a law firm which specifically specializes in delaying tactics. Now you know.
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(The cases almost never go to court...)
Largely because complying is so absurdly easy, especially if there are no modifications as many are asserting here.
Yep. This is why it's ridiculous that Tesla has been infringing on copyright and ripping off the work of hundreds of developers. It's really easy to comply.
I can't sue personally because I don't have any contributions to the Linux kernel. If you know someone who does, they *can* sue personally. If I were one of them, I'd ask for punitive damages because this behavior by Tesla is willful and deliberate and has no justification.
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If anyone wants to see a good example of what I think Sarah is calling for, the Pebble Smartwatch folks have such a page on their website:
https://getpebble.com/legal/open_source
Yep. This is precisely what I expected Tesla to do, until they decided to be all criminal and thievy instead. I still find Tesla's behavior incomprehensible. Musk needs to fire his legal department and hire some real lawyers, who will tell him "Why don't you just DO it?"
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I would suggest that until you know Tesla has violated any licensing agreement, using loaded terms like "stole", "pirated" or "shady" are in poor form.
We have proof that Tesla has violated the licensing agreements for the Linux kernel, repeatedly. Enough proof to convince some of the copyright holders' representatives to start the process of filing suit. "Pirated" and "Shady" are 100% correct. The crazy thing about this is how *pointlessly stupid* it is on the part of Tesla. Just release the source code for your version of the Linux kernel, complete with configuration files.
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Knowing what we do about Mr. Musk, I'm not sure this is the right attitude and approach to get what you want.
As a stockholder, I don't appreciate Musk exposing the company to unnecessary legal risk, and this is *extremely* unnecessary legal risk.
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I think the disconnect is that folks are saying "comply with the GPL, release the modifications and the list of open-source packages used", perhaps a bit vehemently,
I made it very explicitly clear exactly what they needed to do, emphasizing that they did not need to open-source their own proprietary modules, when I called them the first time. And the second time, when I didn't get a call back. (I didn't get a call back the second time either.)
I'm also pretty sure the representatives of the copyright holders made it very explicit exactly what Tesla needed to do when *they* called -- I contacted them after Tesla had failed to comply with the license for roughly a year, which really should have been enough time.
and Elon is hearing "open source the car".
If that's what he's hearing, he needs to turn his ears on.
Now, the following is merely a guess: There is some suspicion that there are problems with the nVidia drivers. nVidia has been skating very close to violating copyright repeatedly, and Tesla may have tripped up by trusting nVidia. (Never trust nVidia.) IIRC, with at least one version, you couldn't legally distribute the proprietary nVidia drivers and the Linux kernel together in binary form.
This sort of thing is why Tesla needs competent lawyers rather than the professional clowns they currently have on staff.