In this edition of our open source news roundup, we take a look Tesla (finally) starting to comply with the GPL, Tencent's new open source AI, an open source insurance policy, and more.
Tesla starts complying with the GPL
Like many companies, electric car maker Tesla has used GPL[1]ed software to quickly get up and running. Like many companies, Tesla has been slow in complying with the requirements of that license. But that's starting to change[2].
After years of cajoling, the company "is now releasing some parts of its software, which is going to be useful to Tesla hackers and security researchers." That includes "code used to build the foundations of its Autopilot semi-autonomous driving tech and the infotainment system found on the Model S and Model X cars[3]." The source code is available in Tesla's GitHub repositories[4].
This first step is welcome but, as the Software Freedom Conservancy notes[5], "compliance means meeting all GPL's requirements, so we don't convey false hopes with an incomplete release."
China's Tencent debuts new artificial intelligence system
Go is an ancient, deceptively complex game of strategy that takes humans years to master. It's also a great challenge for artificial intelligence (AI) developers like the ones at Chinese company Tencent, who recently released their Go-playing software as open source[6].
Called PhoenixGo, the software "recorded a 200-game winning streak" on Tencent's competitive FoxGo online gaming platform. The program went on to win the World AI Go Championship in April 2018. To train PhoenixGo to championship form, Tencent's engineers took advantage of unused processing power on servers running the company's popular WeChat messaging service.
PhoenixGo's source code is on GitHub