SFLC: Automotive Software Governance and Copyleft

The Software Freedom Law Center has announced
the availability of a
whitepaper [PDF] about automotive software and copyleft, written by
Mark Shuttleworth and Eben Moglen. At its core, it's an advertisement for
Ubuntu and Snap, but it does look at some of the issues involved.

The fine grain of interface access rights provided by the snapd
governance agent can thus provide further isolation and security when it
is running user-modified code, guaranteed under the snap packaging
paradigm to cause no other program code to be modified, to break, or to
perform differently because of the presence of the user-modified
program. Such a structure of modification permission can be operated by the
OEM consistent with the requirements of GPLv3. The OEM can publish an
authenticated record of the installation permission issued, indexed by the
Vehicle Identification Number—without publishing the car owner’s
personal information—so that public and private parties can be assured that
no surreptitious modification of vehicle software occurs.