Open Source Delivers

GENIVI is the alliance of companies in the automotive supply chain jointly developing a Linux-based in-vehicle infotainment system (IVI) platform. The All Member Meeting (AMM) in Barcelona drew about 400 attendees, mostly from Europe, though there were plenty of Americans and Asians as well. Highlights of the conference were previews of BMW’s  future GENIVI-based IVIs, Ford’s [...]

At long last, two automotive industry behemoths have mapped out a joint route to serve the growing community of automotive app developers.  This week, Ford Motor Company announced that it will contribute the software for their in-car smartphone app interface, AppLink™, to the GENIVI Alliance.  While this makes Ford the first American automaker to contribute [...]

With 2012 coming to a close and the New Year just around the corner, it’s a time for reflection and predictions.  A revolution of sorts began taking place in the auto industry over the last couple of years. New vehicles today contain over a 100 million lines of code, driving changes in automotive development. As [...]

Each day, when I get in my car and drive to work I think about the software business I’m involved in. Yet it seldom occurs to me that there are over 1 million lines of code running in the car that I’m riding in -And it just works! No bugs, log files, no visible defects [...]

This week marks two major milestones for OSS-based automotive platform development. First, the GENIVI Alliance, an industry consortium of automotive OEMs and suppliers dedicated to building an open source in-vehicle infotainment platform, has opened three projects to the open source community, and stressed their continued dedication to open source-based IVI standards. The Linux Foundation will host these [...]

I had the pleasure of spending past three weeks on the road talking to many members of the automotive IVI (in-vehicle infotainment) software supply community in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Interestingly, a little-known fact:  IVI represents up to 80% of all software running in today’s premium class cars (up to 100 million lines of [...]

I recently spoke at the Electronics and Automotive show in Gothenburg, Sweden, the headquarters of Volvo and many other vehicle companies.  While there is strong interest in using open source in cars and trucks – the impact it’s had in other industries like mobile is partly the catalyst (as I asserted in a previous post) [...]

Last week, a first-of-its-kind survey of the European automotive industry revealed that open source is even more pervasive in the development cycle than anticipated. Yet, the necessary management and governance of these open source development processes are lacking. The survey, conducted by BearingPoint and scientifically guided by Dr. Dirk Riehle, head of the Open Source [...]

A revolution is underway in the automotive industry, and no, it’s not only about hybrids, electric vehicles, or improving the efficiency of the internal combustion engine. Open source software (OSS) is now driving changes in the automotive “human-to-machine” interfaces. If you take a step back, you can see two recent waves of change in the [...]

Last week, Ford introduced its open source platform, OpenXC, developed by Ford Research & Innovation along with New York-based Bug Labs to allow developers real-time access to vehicle data and sensors, GPS and speed while keeping this platform isolated from the control system (great idea!). It’s awesome to see Ford driving this type of open [...]