Re: The role of FOSS in preventing a recurrence of vehicle emissions scandals

[Matt Ivie]

On Tue, 2023-05-09 at 17:32 -0400, John Sullivan wrote:
> 
> One way may be to have the software in question be a fully
> reproducible
> build. The state (or whoever) maintains a list of approved hashes
> from
> known reproducible builds that people can install on their own cars,
> and
> there is a mechanism by which people can submit modified builds
> "upstream" for approval.
> 
> Then cars in order to be street legal have a single "proprietary" box
> (possibly this function could be performed with no modifiable
> software
> at all) with a single responsibility of reporting the hashes of
> software
> installed elsewhere in the car. This enables spot checks.
> 
> -john

If manufacturers would implement this, it would be amazing. This seems
completely feasible on the technical level but what avenue would we
take to get a manufacturer to actually do it.

We could try the legal route...but we don't have the resources of
lobbyists. Do you think there is a company out there that is willing to
do things outside the box and experiment with something like this? 

It would be great to see this kind of thing go beyond just ECMs too.
There are many computers controlling every aspect of our cars. It would
be great to be able to interface to the Body Control Module (BCM) and
be able to control the windows, locks etc. using a custom solution. It
would open the doors to many many more options for after market stereo
/ infotainment systems as well.

The transparency issue becomes very important when it comes to being
able to control what our car is doing. Buying a car and being forced to
subscribe with a monthly fee to use features that are already
mechanically available on the car is wrong. If we had this transparency
then we'd be able to avoid worrying about this sort of thing being
possible.

Privacy issues are another factor. We need to know the data the car is
collecting and who it is being sent to as well as what and how long it
is storing data. Most of these problems persist no matter what the
powertrain is, be it electric or combustion. If we can make forward
momentum on one thing we should aim to do it with all of it.

Regards,
Matt
-- 
"Under the sky, under the heavens there is but one family."
        --Bruce Lee

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