Open Source Autos Hit the Streets in Spain 110
markdowling writes "BBC News has a story about electrically powered tourist cars in Cordoba which provide tourist information in French, English and Spanish as landmarks are passed. The promoter, Alfredo Romeo, calls them Blobjects which he heard described in a speech by Bruce Sterling. The car's tourist guide software is open source - Romeo's quoted reason: 'With proprietary software, innovation comes from the people in marketing. But with open source, innovation comes from the guy who is really in the market. It comes from someone who knows the city.'"
More at Global Electric Motorcars Web Site (Score:5, Informative)
Ironically, the Wikipedia Blobject article [wikipedia.org] says it "needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. This article has been tagged since April 2005" - you'd think that all those "hip" Blogject'ers would have made this entry super cool and happening.
Concrete Cam [komar.org] is up and running.
Re:More at Global Electric Motorcars Web Site (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, the GEM is surprisingly affordable but it certainly doesn't have an "innovative design" as it's just about the same as any electric golf cart with a roof and seatbelts.
Informative Link (Score:5, Informative)
The promoter, Alfredo Romeo, calls them Blobjects which he heard described in a speech by Bruce Sterling.
Here's a link [boingboing.net] to the Bruce Sterling speech, referenced by Alfredo Romeo, courtesy of
boingboing. [boingboing.net]
Link to Alfredo Romeo's Website (Score:3, Informative)
Misleading title (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, the car operating software is not open-source... it's the navigational system software that is. The owner of the company makes a valid point about marketing-driven vs. user-driven software, but I surmise that this is a great example of OS working in the market...
It's cheaper to use open-source in some circumstances.
However, it is very misleading to write that the car is open-source.
See more here (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No regen brakes (Score:2, Informative)
About the code and the company who wrote it (Score:2, Informative)
The code itself was wrote using several free technologies such as wxWidgets+Python, SQLObject+MySQL and GPS Drive. It is supossed to be available soon, as soon as possible.