[CmdrSprinkles]

While possibly too political to discuss on HN, Hotz is a Brand. His claim to fame was rooting an iPhone and later showing the world why we can't have nice things (showing that OtherOS was a security hole and making Sony disable it)

This was a continuation of that. He was hacking the future and all that crap to raise money. Once he and his backers realized there were actually regulatory boards for this (Oh no! Politics!) they had to pull out immediately. So they "fought the system" and open sourced it (not really) to show that he is A Man of The People.

And most people will never care to look at the source and will (hopefully) think he invented Teslas or whatever the hell.

And in a year or two, he and many of the same backers will innovate and revolutionize a new field have a new product that they can hopefully get bought out on before that field's regulatory board cares. And the buyer will know it is snake oil but will now have a reputation and a Brand to increase the value of the actual product they had been working on for years.

[agumonkey]

Eh the "nice things" logic is so irrelevant here, I hope nobody expected this to be true with vehicles. Apple locked ecosystem has nothing to do with ... well gravity.

People either don't know or forgot that not long ago DARPA still held an open challenge to drive alone in the "desert".

[CmdrSprinkles]

The structure of my post could probably use some work. The first paragraph is background on Hotz to give context. The second was what he did at comma and why it was pseudo-open sourced. The third was why it will be effective, and the fourth is how he and his backers will profit