Why does the author of cURL receive letters from frustrated car owners

"Hello! I have a Toyota Corolla with a multimedia system, the rights to which you own. I need advice on how to use GPS ... ”, - this is how one of the letters, which Daniel Stenberg recently received, begins.

It is good to be the author of the popular open source program. You are respected. If you want to get a job in a commercial company, then you do not need to write a resume. The program code is open and speaks for itself. And in general, open source is a huge plus in karma. You can meet and talk to wonderful people who dislike to communicate with "jackets" from corporations. And with you they will be equal.

But popularity has certain problems. Sometimes very unexpected. For example, the author of the well-known program cURL is now receiving letters from frustrated car owners who have problems with the car's infotainment system and the navigator. Why should I?

Casket opens simply. Upon the request of the cURL license, the Stenberg email address is listed on the "About" page of the car's infotainment system that uses the cURL program code, or in the list of contact information and on similar pages. Daniel suspects that sometimes this is the only address that is listed there !
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Ordinary car owners have no idea what cURL is and who Daniel is, but they consider it their right to write a complaint to the address that is indicated on the screen in the car. In a sense, they can be understood. But the situation does not get any less ridiculous.

cURL is a free, cross-platform command line utility designed to copy files using different protocols with the URL syntax. The author is Daniel Stenberg. He is the owner of all rights. The email address daniel@haxx.se is listed in the text of the cURL license , which is a derivative of the standard MIT license. cURL acts as a standalone wrapper for the libcurl library. In turn, libcurl is used to provide the ability to transfer files to numerous applications in the system.

You ask how the cURL program code got into the car computer? Well, you are just not familiar with the "minced meat" of modern cars. These are real computers on wheels, including those with network functionality. In particular, cURL is part of the standard GenIVI and Tizen automotive software installation package, and also comes bundled with many other software packages.

It is unlikely that Daniel Stenberg could assume in 1997, when he released the first version of cURL, that in twenty years his program would be installed in millions of cars around the world. But it happened.

And now he has to live with it: “Usually it doesn’t affect my daily life too much,” he writes. “Of course, I’m worried about hundreds of millions of cURL installations in the world, but supplier companies usually don’t connect with me, and cURL is still extremely stable, so not many of these people appear on the bug tracker or mailing list (and if they do, they don’t tell where they live and what they work for).

Car owners do not turn to the bug tracker or mailing list, but they write to Stenberg personally. In his blog, Daniel published the three best pearls from recently received letters.

November 13, 2016
Hello, sir
I have Avalon 2016
Regarding the music player, why is there a delay between sound and video, if you connect via Bluetooth, and how to fix it

November 5, 2016
Hello,
I have a new navigation system FM5T-19H449-FC Europe F4 with an SD Card installed on my new Ford Mondeo.
I can read the card, but I can not write to it. I want to add some points to the map in the navigator. Can you help me do this?

November 5, 2016
Hello,
I have a Toyota Corolla with a multimedia system, the rights to which you own.
I need advice on how to use GPS.
Now I can not use and can not see the cards.
And I want to know how to add Hebrew.

Daniel Stenberg regrets to admit that he rarely responds to these letters. Just because the author cURL does not know how to help the unfortunate car owners. Over the years, he clearly understood that trying to explain to users what an open source license is and why it does not relate to the product being used takes too much time and effort.

It is not even clear where you can redirect such letters. Typically, automakers do not have special departments that can answer users on such “lamer” software questions. Third-party software developers also do not always provide technical support via telephone and email. For example, where to write to the same owner of the Corolla, who needs Hebrew in the navigator? It is probably meaningless to write to Toyota.

Stenberg himself reasonably thinks about this: “If these people themselves cannot find the address, where to write, should I do it? They talk about different models of machines, different devices and manufacturers. I will have to look for addresses, where to redirect the letters, explain the situation, etc. ”

I am glad that Stenberg has not yet had to face threats from strange personalities, as the author of the thttpd web server . His contacts affected evacuators (the guys who are involved in evacuating cars - a highly competitive, semi-gangster business) found the link at the bottom of the web page on the Russian-language hacker forum, where hackers published a list of hacked sites. This is generally a classic of the genre.

Anyway, it is not clear what to do to Daniel Stenberg in such a situation. Changing an email address is not an option.