I'm starting to feel as though what I wrote may cause some of us to get "too far into the weeds" with the legalities, which was not my intent. The point I was trying to illustrate as plainly as possible is that if they should get a cut, then why shouldn't Mitsu too?

As far as what the vendors are offering, I have no problem with them offering this as a tuning solution. They even sell just the necessary parts if that's all one desires, which there is nothing wrong with that. Way I see it, if someone doesn't know or feel comfortable doing it themselves and want it done, then having it sold as a package is a viable option. It's in no way a monopoly, and it's not like the conversion isn't out there readily available for those who want to do it themselves.

 

We wanted to take the time to thank Dave, MrFred, l2r99gst, Dr. Banks for all of their efforts to support the community. The forum consists of many talented people from all walks of life and have specialized skills not necessarily developed for this hobby, but when they take the time from their busy lives making a living in their day job to share their specialized skills for the good of progress in the sport compact arena when they are not obligated to do so, it is a testament to their character and they should be acknowledged and/or supported.

Thank you to the ones that have helped develop these advances in OEM ECU tuning.

TTP

 

Mitsu did they cut, in RRP.

 

As stated by Tephra, I feel that mitsu already got there cut when I dropped $34,000 of my hard earned money for the car that I own. Them making the car with an Open ECU and me voluntarily buying it means that I have bought all rights to said ECU and I can do whatever I want with it. Also, I understand that by modifying any part of said ECU I may or may not be voiding any expressed or implied warranty provided by said manufacturer and that I can no longer hold them responsible to anything that may arise from said moddifications.

In other words:
I bought it,
I ****ed with it,
it's mine now in all it's wonderous glory!!!

Thanks David, Dr. Banks, Eric, MrFred, Aaron, and everyone else who has ever dissected any portion of the ECU that I have used!!!!

Donation buttons in your signature block are not against the forum rules if I understand correctly!

Josh

 

Because what you wrote was not a good example of the point you were trying to prove that is why it got picked apart. We understand where you were going with it, but there is a difference between what you meant to say (implied) and what you actually wrote. And techinically (see my next post) if Mitsu wanted they could come and get a cut too.

 

Negative, negative, negative. This is a huge misconception as to how most software licenses work. Software licenses give you the user, the right to use the version of the software on as many computers as you have bought the right to. Most of them do not grant you any "ownership" rights to the source code. Which means you cannot modify it, you cannot reverse engineer it and you cannot modify it and then try to resell that modification as your own.

That is a serious breach of just about any basic software license. (I have to say most here because of the "copy left" type of Open source licenses that are there. But I'd put my car on the line that Mitsu does not have a "Copy left" type license on the ECU).

Mitsubishi did not make this car with an Open ECU. If they did then the guys at mynes (sp) and Hamish and co would not ever have had to do the reverse engineering that did to figure out the protocols to connect to said ECU and then the continued reverse engineering on this forum to figure out what the tables are and what not would not have to be done. Why? Because that would have been publicly known.

So while you do own the ECU, you don't own the code on it. If Mitsubishi (or any other car manufacturer) really wanted to go after any of the guys here they could do so and they would win. Because of the reasons stated above.

The reason Mitsubishi probably doesn't care that much is honeslty how much could they get from going after a tephra? Or a JCS or a mrfred? Peanuts compared to if they "let live" and just void warranties when stuff starts to break .

Now should this really take off and start to make enough money to make going after people worthwhile then expect to see them show up and start making a ruckus (see all the patent troll companies in the Software business today). But its doubtful, because they've let a whole host of other companies in their backyard do this for decades now with no issues because its just not worth it.

 

We all know that the stock ECU coupled with injector advancements in recent times really have made standalones more or less unneeded except for their logging capability. The only thing I had seen that was an advantage was anti-lag but that seems to be pretty much figured out with the various launch control mods.

Heck if I absolutely needed additional logging capacity I could build a carputer and call it a day.

There is always Evo-tech as someone pointed out.

Dwayne, the source code is generally not written by the auto manufacturers.

 

CarDaq is an example of them all using the same basic communication. Mitsu did little more than we have, alter a basic control package to their specific application with a chipset they bought, tune it, sell it.

 

I can't comment on what they have or have not done. But since they re-distribute it as a large scale corporation they either have the rights to do so, or have licensed the rights to do so. That's the huge legal difference between what they have done, and what the guys here are doing .

 

IP in general is a tricky business and software is particularly tricky....

 

Dont get me wrong I am sure they are fully licensed to use it. Its just that the software is more universal than we might think. Take for instance OBD2 subroutines, all cars have to have them and be able to communicate. The chipsets arent made by Mitsu (or any other manufacturer) but a 3rd party and communicate in a universal native.

We have no IP rights, other than maybe interface code (i.e. Hamish) at the most. What we make the cars do with whats there, the know how is intellectual but to say its IP is tantamount to saying that BurgerKing owns flame broiling.

I am in total agreement with you though Dwayne, in case it seemed otherwise

 

As it is, we still have not fully reached the heart of the discussion. Sure, we can discuss legalities, and continue to pay homage in text for the work they've done, but the sad fact of the matter is that if we continue down this path it will lead to a bazillion pages of nothingness and eventually juvenile statements and bashing. It's an unfortunate fact that threads of any intelligent nature go this way on this board (thus why I don't post here often).

I, for one, want to see what the pioneers of the SD Mod have to write on the issue or non-issue. If this is a non-issue for them, then let's put this to rest before it get's out of hand. On the other side, if this is, let's delve further.

 

Nobody really argued the legality issue (at least not me). However from a morality issue, I think by the length of the responses of this thread it proves it is a doucebag move.

Vendors and coders can coexist and quite happily. Many provide great input to these forums and that is much appreciated.

 

welcome to open source programming. Remember that all of the work that we do/contribute on this forum or on openecu is all covered by an open source license. Everything that you and others have done, has been covered by the initial open source license applied to the definition tables first released by tatrix and open ECU. The open source license enabled this type of work in the first place by offering some legal protection to those distrubuting or contributing to the reverse engineering of the ECU.

Other vendors have profited from the work done here. While I don't like it, there is nothing that we should do about it, that is the nature of open source licenses.

 

at the minimum, the work should be acknowledged.