> But it’s not better (morally) than closed source.

That's a highly subjective opinion, and yours is not more valid than others'

Likewise to who I’m responding to, and exactly my point.

The first principle, is when I have a thing (computer, car, toaster), I have the thing. It’s mine. I control it, I can have it repaired wherever, I can resell it, and if I have the skill, maybe even tweak it. But most importantly the thing serves me, not the corporation that sold it to me.

If the thing is a general purpose computer that can run arbitrary software (and I’d be tempted to include anything that can be remotely updated as "software", so this would include Tesla’s firmware), then I should be able to run my software instead. That’s the true test of whether I truly own my computing device.

Before we even get to Free Software, we need documented hardware architectures.

That is why I made the point about the metal in a Tesla. It’s hardware, it’s yours, you have no reasonable capability to modify it, yet that is uncontroversial. So why is the software?

A metal bar will always be a metal bar.

Software is malleable, and Tesla (or hackers) can change it under your feet. You should be able to inspect it and have a say in what it does or whether to accept the next update.

See the recent Philips Hue debacle for an example of when software that's been running well for years suddenly turns on the user.

Metal isn’t malleable? I guess they just dug it up in the shape of a car.

See recent car recalls where there is a structural problem with the car.

This is not unique to software.

Right, I worded that poorly. The point is that Tesla cannot remotely change the metal in your car, whereas they can with the software.

We as users should demand insight into the software running on hardware we own. Otherwise we only partially own it, and if the device is connected to the internet, we can lose ownership any time.

They can, it’s called a recall. If you do not respond to a recall the value of you car basically hits 0. Which was literally my point.

When you buy a house do you enquire into the grade of concrete used in the foundations? Should “we home owners demand insight into the concrete ratios used”.

I wonder if on electrician forums there are folks saying: “wiring should be open source”? Like because you understand something you want more insight, but you’re happy to be in ignorant bliss on every other aspect of a product.

That doesn't make sense. I can sell the metal, I can shape it to my will, I can rip it apart and use it for other things. Can I do that with the software?

You can ruin it sure. You don’t know the specific alloy. So you couldn’t reasonably modify for anything useful, what’s its melting point? How should you cool it? You don’t know. You’d have to reverse engineer it, just like the software

Same with the software, there is a pc and an FSD chip in there. You could definitely muck with it. You just don’t have any details. Is it because you’re a software engineer and not a metallurgist that you think like this?