DIYEFI.org Forum

hey guys, my first post here, wish i had found your project earlier! looks very interesting
i was wondering if FreeEMS tuner is only compatible with the FreeEMS hardware?
while I'm asking, how does FreeEMS differentiate itself from Megasquirt or <other_generic_DIY_EFI_system>? what is compatible between the systems and what is changing?

Hi barf,

Ultimately I would love the Tuner to support a wide range of EMSs. It has been designed so that comms protocols can be plugged in, so to support another EMS just requires someone willing to write the plugin and test with the hardware

FreeEMS's differentiator is that it is 100% open source

Cheers,
Aaron

Just to clarify, MegaSquirt is NOT open source, despite what they may tell you.

I'd like to think that FreeEMS had other differentiators too, such as peer review, community consultation and a hard one to define "doing things properly". Where the latter includes proper version and source control, release cycles, tagging, small files, small functions, no duplicated code, etc etc.

Basically, as soon as I get my sh** together, I'll be dogging Aaron and any of his willing helpers/codevs to get various things done. There is a lot of work around generic adjustability and access to all the adjustables that the ecu offers, to be done. The higher level comms protocol needs some fine tuning before too much code gets written, though.

Fred.

Just to clarify, MegaSquirt is NOT open source, despite what they may tell you.

That's debatable because the source code is available so it is technically open source (at least until MS3). But it's definitely not free.

Jean

It's not debatable, really. The Open Source Institute defines what open source, the term, not the two words, means, and ms does not fit those criteria in any way, shape or form. The source is available, yes. You can modify it, yes. But can you use it for your specific purposes, no. It is proprietary software with distributed source code, not open source.

More here : http://www.opensource.org/

Fred.

I'm not arguing that it doesn't meet the OSI definition but to me saying that it's distributed source code and not open source because of that is semantics and closer to a religious debate. But I know this is a losing battle so I'll leave it at that.

Jean

And the above is the reason why Richard Stallman is very much anti the "open source" term in the first place. It is open to too much interpretation.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-sour ... point.html

It isn't really a religious debate, the point is that calling it open source carries a lot of conotations, most of which are NOT correct about MegaSquirt code. IE, calling MegaSquirt open source is extremely misleading due to the sort of things that come to mind when open source is mentioned. That is what it is about. But you know that :-)

Fred.

Yeah, you pointed to that link either in a previous post or directly to me and I much prefer his view than what is commonly seen.

And I know it's not really a religious debate because there are logical reasons behind the naming. But I don't like the commonly seen attitude of them against us and the good against the bad of some proponents of open whatever. Luckily, it's not present here (mostly ).

By the way, I haven't checked but I'm pretty sure there is no claim that MS is open source, at least not anymore. I think it mostly comes from people's interpretation and the fact that the code and schematics are openly (pun intented) available.

Jean

jbelanger wrote:Yeah, you pointed to that link either in a previous post or directly to me and I much prefer his view than what is commonly seen.

Yep, it's (i think) in the "all users must read" which I threw up after someone pissed me off quite a bit. I should review it and ensure it still makes sense :-)

And I know it's not really a religious debate because there are logical reasons behind the naming. But I don't like the commonly seen attitude of them against us and the good against the bad of some proponents of open whatever. Luckily, it's not present here (mostly :) ).

Sure, the technical problems with MS are definitely surmountable, it's just the political problems that mean they wont/cant be, in the most part. I see quite a few ideas from this site have made it into ms2e and ms3 now, excellent. The more they are forced to improve, the better for everyone.

By the way, I haven't checked but I'm pretty sure there is no claim that MS is open source, at least not anymore. I think it mostly comes from people's interpretation and the fact that the code and schematics are openly (pun intented) available.

You're exactly right, if there ever was, it was never a big thing, it was just a thing. And yes, it's the consumers that get it wrong and are largely left uncorrected.

bold: ROFL, you're a good bastard, Jean! :-)

Fred.