Open Source Delivers

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) [...]

From NASA and OpenStack to Facebook and Instagram, open source has dominated technology news this week. Within the last 7 days, there have been multiple open source announcements in government, cloud, social media and auto…and you’re not going to miss any of it! Scott Merrill reported on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s announcement of its [...]

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 [...]

Without a doubt, the biggest story in open source this week was the news that Red Hat would be the first $1 billion open source company.  This announcement sparked a media fire and had all the tech bloggers weighing in on what Red Hat’s success means for open source software. Red Hat’s CEO, Jim Whitehurst, [...]

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 [...]

Happy Friday! I’m sure most of you are looking forward to the St. Patrick’s Day weekend, so I’ll keep this short and get straight to open source news from the week. Jay Lyman’s latest article on LinuxInsider, “Open Source Coopetition Fueled by LF Growth,” discussed how the Linux Foundation has been able to bring competitors [...]

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 [...]

Full disclosure: I drive a 2002 Jeep Wrangler with 110,000 miles on it—probably the lowest tech car on the market the year it was built. I’m the only guy I know who rolls his own windows and still has a cassette player* in the dash. So, excuse the naïve wonderment at the new technology and [...]

The largest trade event in the mobile industry, the Mobile World Congress (MWC), is taking place this week in Barcelona. Reporting from the show, MarketWatch’s Kim Hjelmgaard said that he sees “every industry on earth mobilizing.”  Given this is a mobile event, it’s no surprise he’d make such a grandiose statement.  But when you look [...]