This is what the GPL was meant to fight against. Having boxes running software that is still under the control of the manufacturer.

Instead people complained that it was hard to use the code at work. YES. THAT’S THE POINT.

Sure but that’s also the reason stuff like this isn’t GPL. For-profit software simply isn’t going to use the give-away-for-free license.

You know it might make sense for automotive. The car is the product after all. The quality of the engine is ultimately what drives sales and most of the entertainment is traditionally third party. Making the on board stuff open helps them make a platform for third parties that are safe from manufacturer trying to push them out or collect fees. That environment also helps the manufacturer in its own sales as their cars are where the cultural impact is.

Sharing code makes sense for everybody. It lets them spend a lot less resources on fixing shit if everyone else is also doing that somewhere upstream. With FOSS you can have your cake and eat it too. At some point Google calculated that committing one developer upstream for the Linux kernel can save a company the equivalent of a couple dozen specialist developers downstream in bug prevention and feature alignment across vendors alone.

Unfortunately many companies continue to think about code as if it were potatoes. It doesn’t fucking matter who owns the code, it’s a functional spec. But hey, look at all the trouble we have explaining why standards are good – nevermind opening code.