Been away the last week and missed most of this, and seems to be a moot point as everyone has their minds pretty much made up. But some misinformation should be cleared up and I'm not known for being silent
Open source is not a term that should be given to anything you pay for or that uses licensing (Tactrix cable, flashing software). So what some think is "free" or "community" derived is filling pockets for someone when talking about the above. The only question is who. The company that put in thousands of man hours or the company who snooped the handshake and copied the def? Before you think robin hood, read on.
DIY editing is fine for 5% of people. The rest have to rely on tuners. Tuners have to rely on good software. Some compete on price, some don't. Have at it with those who do, you get what you pay for. I'd rather go weld than sell a canned tune with no followup or attach my name to a tune that is not where I want it to be. Do you really want a tune for someone working for $12/hr? Doing something for a passion is all good and why I got into this, but if you want people sticking around, it has to be reasonable.
"Open Source" -- you're more attached than anyone else in this particular debate. If updates stop coming, software has issues, you're relying on ONE person out in the Ukraine to support it. The "community" that uses romraider has great tidbits that help add to the ecu definitions. But you're relying on volunteers. Fine for that 5%, not practical for anyone else. With that said, the true open source openecu/romraider is NOT the software being discussed here, so it is unfair to give it those merits.
"Corporatism" lol
A small shop with maybe less than a dozen employees who bust their butts supporting even the little guy in a high risk field where within months you're undercut by...your own work. I'm pretty sure that's not "corporatist". For those who think any of us private tuners are "corporate", you've not met us. We all drive modded cars and/or race and started this because it makes more sense to LLC up and pay the taxes. How great it is that people have options apart from the seedy places we have seen.
Now back to the "robin hoods," who snoop the handshake, steal one definition (which then is easy to transpose on them ALL) and then give them to you for "free" (oh yeah, just buy the cable and the software + licensing) are like the rolex you get in chinatown. Or the manifold you get on ebay. Most of us don't care because those folks aren't the customer that would want a professional tuner anyway, but I hope nobody thinks that ebay manifold, with mild steel flanges, thing gauge tubing, ill fitting holes--will hold that nice T4 setup for very long. There's a lot more to the backend of this and a reason most of us "professionals" use EcuTek, Cobb, SCT and not open source. Again, you get what you pay for.
It's certainly not because we make more money by paying their license fees. When dealing with numbers and not just your one car, you see the flaws much quicker. Have a flash fail? What if your def isn't supported? What about that nagging problem nobody's figured out, who will support the devs working on it?
The market can decide what happens, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that the market can shoot itself in the foot here. There's many vehicles that have 0 flashing support, and can stay that way because the volunteers aren't there. Take away incentive from the real developers to take the risk, cut the prices on tuning to take the honest folks out, and you're back to the seedy shops using the cheapest platform and booting you out the door so they can sell you that forged engine down the road.