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GPL v3GPL v3Posted Aug 9, 2012 9:31 UTC (Thu) by miahfost (subscriber, #51602)In reply to: GPL v3 by mkerrisk Parent article: GENIVI: moving an industry to open source
I agree that the App market is not likely to be something that car makers care all that much about. While its likely great to have a bunch of fun driving apps available, the key revenue stream is the purchase of the vehicle with the head unit.
But that does not mean that the entire customer relationship is not worth protecting jealously. For example, certified auto parts are a huge business, as is the automotive aftermarket in general. The OEMs are very interested in blocking third party success in that market and keeping that revenue for themselves.
The OEMs have not been successful so far blocking software updates, there exists software to modify your ECU today. That software is significantly more prone to catastrophic failure because it bypasses things like the air to fuel mixture that the car maker carefully calibrated for safety and efficiency. Good article on this very topic: http://nyti.ms/Nf4Vry
I think allowing car owners to update their IVI systems would be much more appropriate and the argument currently being used by automotive legal eagles may not be particularly persuasive, i.e. blocking the GPL v3 is for safety's sake. I think there are a lot of business considerations that are behind this.
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GPL v3 Posted Aug 10, 2012 2:28 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> I agree that the App market is not likely to be something that car makers care all that much about.
I disagree with this in the long run.
Think of the money to be made by allowing the kids in the back to install their games, watch movies, and do all the other things that they could do with android apps running on the car IVI system (assuming that the car companies charge some markup for their branded store)
All it will take is one company doing this and all of the sudden, the others will change their tune to cash in on the windfall.
GPL v3 Posted Aug 23, 2012 13:26 UTC (Thu) by miahfost (subscriber, #51602) [Link]
But this will likely happen on tablets, game consoles, phablets, etc. The RSE (Rear Seat Entertainment unit) is likely only going to show movies and the like, not be a full blown computer.
GPL v3 Posted Aug 24, 2012 2:27 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
"show movies and the like" now includes doing things like being able to play games.
besides, it's easier to just install a plain android device in the car for this, it handles so many formats, functions, networks, etc without any development effort.
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