There is also the entire liability and planed obsolescent issues not being dealt with. Will Tesla support these cars forever? Will 10 year old models still get software updates?
People can already modify their car hardware in dangerous ways, yet no one is welding the hood shut. You may weld spikes on your car to keep prying eyes away if you wish, but when you inevitably impale someone, Ford will not be liable.
Why should software be treated differently? All Tesla has to do to avoid liability is to say "The vehicle was running firmware with aftermarket firmware installed by the owner". They won't even need to run diagnostics, they can simply look at the logs they collect.
It's a bit like when people used to modding their own hardware tools encounter a GPU or a RAM card that won't fit into a PCI slot, so they "cut it to fit", and then are surprised it doesn't work.
When you modify a car physically with spikes or to make more engine noise, or to have looser suspension you are dealing with isolated newtonian environments.
When you tweak software that involves massive machine learned models, you can cause absolutely unpredictable horrific consequences. There are good reasons to restrict this.
Because it will be obvious that it was modified, even to journalists, the public and a jury of your peers. Also the cops, who will arrest you for it.
But there is no such visibility for software.
> But there is no such visibility for software
Software modification has a lot of visibility, especially since Teslas log everything - why not log when new firmware was loaded? They could also checksum post-facto, but even that is not necessary: Tesla could implement something similar to Androids "fastboot oem unlock" option
What I mean by visibility is that you can't fudge it, that reality is plainly visible to all actors.
Income is not visible directly (although what one's house looks like for example is visible and is a good indication of income). If you meet a well-dressed guy in a Starbucks, you have no idea whether he's crippled with debt or whether he has so much money he doesn't know what to do with. And that's true regardless of the fact that income is regulated by the government, that banks keep records and all that.
Software is NOT visible in that sense: whether your microwave is running code that will make it explode when you type in 9999 or not, is not something that can be known by everyone but the first person who has access to the device, let alone the public who couldn't understand how to compare two hashes anyway.
As far as any third party is concerned, Tesla could just be faking logs and no one would know. Actually, you may not see it still, so imagine that say, GM, suddenly releases an autonomous car and it crashes. Do you trust them when they tell you that the logs say the driver was at fault?
Cars are already extremely risky to modify, but it is still possible (and it's even a protected consumer right). I can go out and accidentally cut the breaks on my own car while changing the tire, if it causes harm, we already have a system in place to deal with it.
Why should software be any different?
I don't think that is the same for self-driving software if you were allowed to hack it. It is easy to test if your brakes work, I think it may be harder to test modified software with the huge number of interactions it must deal with.
Tough. We have liability law to cover that.
You'll be screaming to allow modification when your trip is 20 minutes longer because a bunch of rich assholes paid Tesla to route all traffic around their neighborhood.
Its your car. It's Tesla software. You don't own it, just like you don't own any of the other commercial software you use.
I can't really find fault in it; they deserve the lion's share of the revenue (not Uber, Lyft, or you) if you put the vehicle into their shared ridesharing fleet for profit.
You don't have to put it into their fleet though. But if you do, them the terms.
What's next?
A blender has some kind of timer software in it so you can't use it in commercial unless you are on blender network? A TV has software for programmable channel in it, so you can't use it in your bar unless the TV vendor allow it?
Software is their implementation detail, I buy the resulting whole product.
Tesla is not prohibiting ridesharing. They are requiring the vehicle be in their ridesharing pool if you use their autonomous driving software.
Again, you own the car, not the software. Don't like the license, don't buy the car. Others will.
and I should be able to use it as I see fit.
Edit: It's worth clarifying my opinion. I'm totally alright with software "manufacturers" leasing software to end-users (or, in the case of Tesla, leasing the software inside their rolling computers to drivers). What I take issue with is the notion that there is a "sale" when a license is involved. It's a lease, and I'd like to see the force of law involved in reflecting that fact in the marketplace. Maybe it's splitting hairs, but I think consumers need to be clearly told that they do not own virtually anything that they've purchased that contains a general-purpose computer, and that they should not expect the benefits of ownership (ability to modify, to continue using even when the "manufacturer" has decided to no longer "support" the product, ability to resell, etc) in such a transaction.
And if you're in the tech industry, that "legal bs" is what allows you to have an income.
So what you’re saying is that just because his salary depends upon his not understanding the arguments for this to be “legal bs”, he therefore should voluntarily choose to abstain from understanding them? Upton Sinclair would turn in his grave.
Your income is physically earned, not 'allowed' to you by insidious and underhanded legal means.
Software has, by the way, always* been this way. I've been "buying software" for twenty years and I've never actually not gotten a license with it rather than the software itself, with all ownership rights conferred to me.
*within the scope of my knowledge and experience
Why? I paid them for the car. I should able to use the car however I want.
Honestly, this doesn't seem all that unreasonable. Self-driving functionality is presumably a piece of functionality that's heavily dependent upon lots of data that Tesla owns, dependent upon regularly getting software update, etc. Why should Tesla give its data and continued work on software upgrades to you for the purposes of using that for the benefit of one of Tesla's competitors?
Just face it. If you're buying a Tesla, you're not just buying a car, you're buying a software platform and access to lots of data and engineering work that Tesla provides on an ongoing basis. If you want just a car, then don't buy Tesla.
That said, if you are looking to buy a self-driving car and using that self-driving functionality for Uber or Lyft, good luck figuring out how. It would not surprise me if other self-driving cars had similar restrictions (though I guess if Uber sells self-driving cars to the general public then presumably you could use those with Uber, but probably not with Lyft).
It's not unprecedented to have severe restrictions on software in EU. E.g. you can't use le Windows you legally obtained in France on two PCs simultaneously. Some vendors charge per-CPU/core licenses, some network software (e.g. certain PABX) charge even by the number of connected endpoints.
A car, on the other hand, is not copied after purchase, so a copyright license is not relevant. A “license” (as stated above) is not a general list of conditions you have to agree on; it is simply a list of permissions for you to do what copyright law (and trademark law, etc.) would otherwise not allow you to do. No such law restricts what a buyer is allowed to do with a car after a purchase is made, unless a contract is signed. A contract can state arbitrary restrictions, but for something to be a contract, it has to fulfill a number of conditions: it must be knowingly and willingly entered into by both parties, it must not be unilateral or even, in some jurisdictions, too beneficial to only one party. Clearly your standard so-called “license agreement” does not qualify. Ideally, and usually, a contract is something on paper which both parties sign. Do you sign such a thing when “buying” a Tesla? If so, does this contract allow resale? Does the contract require the reseller to require the second-hand buyer to also sign it?
The issues with not being able to modify your own stuff is already really shitty, but its not something that the average Joe really can understand easily, and even less care about it.
But not being able to USE your car for some things? That just screams easy headlines and it's a reason I might not get a Tesla in the future.