BMW wants to pimp your ride with open source

Open-source software is being used just about everywhere to power everything from ERP systems to email. BMW, however, has even better plans for open source:

It wants The Ultimate Driving Machine to be powered by The Ultimate Software Development Methodology. In other words, we may have the chance to drive open source in the near future:

...BMW [recently] revealed it is looking for partners as it pursues an open-source car computing platform. The German company is enthusiastic about the potential for such an open-source system's potential to keep up with the rapid advances in technology and features in the multimedia and digital entertainment areas.

Though no other car makers are yet officially on board, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors and Honda have previously participated in a panel on the subject, reports Automotive News. BMW said it wants to have an open-source system in a vehicle selling 200,000 or more units over the next five to seven years.

Did BMW just become the official car for open-source developers everywhere?

BMW, of course, isn't in this for religion. It needs open source because "the speed in the infotainment and entertainment industry requires us to be on a much faster track," said Gunter Reichart, BMW vice president of driver assistance, body electronics and electrical networks. In other words, proprietary software doesn't innovate fast enough, and it makes no sense for each individual car company to reinvent the wheel, as it were.

[jsoltero]

This is surprising considering the fact that BMW's iDrive and other internal software for the last few years is <a href="http://www.industrialnetworking.co.uk/mag/v8-2/n2.htm">built on a variant of WindowsCE</a> (or whatever they're calling it these days). Still, it is promising that they are switching software platforms not only because they envision open source, but also because their current software platform is one aspect of their cars which no one particularly likes.

The cars require constant "patches" and the system itself is slow and buggy. Let's hope whatever OSS based system they build addresses that.

[eldon21]

Dang. I just bought an Audi. I love the idea of being able to tinker with at least the infotainment portion of the car computer system. Not sure how far / how open BMW would make this to the individual owner or independent developer but possibilities are intriguing.

[storm14k]

You mean Microsoft's technology in the Ford cars isn't cutting it? lol

If Google were smart....

[andrewkatz]

SSI open sourced the firmware for their mStation in-car MP3 jukebox and it was incredible how quickly the community came up not only with bug fixes, but also added new and genuinely innovative functionality. (Pity it didn't save the company, but that's another story).

This area has exactly the sort of itches that open sourcers like to scratch. Clearly, BMW aren't going to allow access to the gearbox/engine/braking/suspension systems (pity - that would be fun, but would make insurance impossible, and create plenty of jobs for lawyers) but I wonder how much access they will give to the other information available, like location from the GPS system, attitiude etc. from the accelerometers, weather from the rain and sun sensors and so on? What would be really interesting is to add a couple of USB ports to allow expansion with additional disks, WiFi and bluetooth. You could set up mesh networks between similarly equipped cars to allow a whole host of legally questionable but hugely fun activities, such as streaming playlists between cars, sharing telemetry data for time trials and racing, providing warnings of speed traps and having audiovisual communication between the drivers and passengers in different cars.

I can't wait!