JohnBradley

iTrader: (30)

1G love fo life

I agree Alex that is why this discussion is pointless. I dont lock it for the reasons you list. Either they'll get it anyway, someone will overwrite it, I become irrelevant etc.

I only mention ECUtek and Cobb in this (not that they are a bad way to go) because they do lock the ECU's, make it impossible to view the tune in the case of the ECUtek and change the handshake protocol in the case of Cobb and make it impossible to flash unless the ECU has been unmarried. No one has ever called them out on it though so I assume its okay then for them to do it, but the shoptuners it isnt, and that level of hyprocisy is what gets me fired up.

Jumperalex

Nope not ok for them either as far as I'm concerned. But as with shop tuners, their choice to do it, our choice to avoid it. I have a lot less time to futz with my car now than I did back in my Talon days, but every time I looked into a mail-in tune I was stopped dead by the lock. So here I sit reading like a mad man, with a laptop I bought 95% for tuning and 5% because I wanted it for an extended trip I was going on.

~BoOsTeR~

iTrader: (24)

To lock or not to lock..

To each his own...

I am simply greatful for the holy grail that is EvoM and all the contributors. All who contribute are (in reality) affecting the wide world with the sharing of the interworkings of the ECU and how to manipulate and modify the functionality.

Words really can't describe how lucky we all are in that so much knowledge is shared and propagated here...and the industry that is a part of it is perpetuated at a phenomenal rate.

Many thanks from this Evo owner.

Happy driving.

codgi

iTrader: (22)

Wow RiRi got mentioned in here a lot .

Anyhows IP is always a funny one, because proving it is yours in many cases in going to be hard especially in this case.

I still stand by my point that if you need to lock to keep your "business" going then you don't understand the business you are in in the first place.

For Cobb and Ecutek, i am hazarding that somewhere in all the stuff you get when you sign up with them it explains why they lock out the ECU. They have chosen to make their money by "locking" you into their distributors and their technology, this is no different than HKS and their system.

For the ECUFlash tuners, who at the end of the day don't own any software or technology, well the ones that want to stay in business their best bet would be to choose to keep their current customers with good timely service, communication and ensuring their skills are always up to date.

Mattjin

I just think everyone is missing the point with the music comparison. The point is to say that we are dealing with people's knowledge. You are paying for the knowledge, not a product and only in part a service. Your laws in your part of the world with regards to IP may be completely different to anothers too, so talking about that is pointless except in your own little corner. BTW, thinking about it a little more, we are actually not stealing Mitsubishi's code if we are replacing it with our own. Once it is modified it is not their code anymore. we are only breaching their rights if we flash in stock maps from other models (eg. RA maps).

It is the moochers that wait for a free answer that make myself and others stop open development, so I can see JB's side here quite clearly. He, Tephra, MrFred, et al have all contributed quite alot, and I for one am surprised they all give so much for free. Although not applicable to many, I have unravelled most of the Evo7 GT-A mapping and provided it for free too. I did it because I got a leg-up starting from others open knowledge so I have contributed back to help the next person who comes along looking for info. But I am tending to think it is the free information that is causing the Ebay generation to expect everything for free. If you cant get it free here, you will get it free there. The answer to this is to not lock ECU's, but rather to not give out the info that lets DIYer's...well... do it themselves. It is a very one sided debate, the fact that some sectors of the tuning world are not considered scumbags, but others are for doing exactly the same thing.

I would also not get too complacent about cheap reflash tunes. It wont be too long at all before the ECU's are more heavily encrypted and altered from our current understanding, at the factory level. Take a look at some of GM's work with mathematical equations for VE table. No more lookup tables. Sure people find a way around for now, but finding a free solution is going to get more and more difficult as time goes on. As end-users, you are on borrowed time in the free tuning world and then we will all be slaves to the super-nerds who have the unique knowledge to crack the system and then charge us all through the nose for its access. When you too have just coughed up a large amount of money for access you wont be so quick to give it away for free too. One of the features I have been pushing to have added to Haltech's new gen ECU's due soon is to have an access log stored in memory. When you go online it records the day,date,time. If I tune a car I offer support for it, but if I should see someone has been online since I last accessed the ECU... sorry no backup. You can look at it all you want, no-one will stop you, but doing so means you loose any support. The electronic version of breaking the tamper seal. Does that make me an a-hole, or does that offer a compromise for both sides?

Anyway, there is no point talking further about this. Users will want things unlocked, tuner will want them locked, and never the twain shall meet.

Jumperalex

I hear ya, but knowledge is not protected by copyright here, a creative work is protected. There could be an arguement that the modified table of values is a creative work but that is not a settled debate and I would contend that they are not. The algorithms, which some folks on here like Tephra, MrFred, etc are actually modifying are much closer to copyrightable code just like more commonly recognized software. But this conversation isn't talking about that, it is talking about modified tables that one tuner copies from another. Tables which are arguably of dubious use on a different car anyway.

We may not be on borrowed time if the current push for legislation goes the way we hope it would. The automakers are not going to be allowed to keep too many secrets at least as it purtains to allowing non-dealer mechanics to work on the car. But of course that doesn't mean they have to reveal trade secrets which result from legitimate investment in R&D. But there IS a middle ground and they WILL be forced to release enough info if they push to much further towards making it impossible for non-dealers to work on the cars.

You also hit on a good point that it doesn't have to be easy, or free, it just has to be possible and at a reasonable price for indepentant mechanics to be able to work on the car. So in that respect you may end up being right that the pendulum will swing back towards high barriers to entry allowing the uber-geeks / well funded to charge joe schmoe an arm and a leg. But I would consider that a broken system and if there is one thing people like us are all good at it is routing around broken systems. Look how quickly we get around things like DVD encryption, obscure ECU hex code, obfuscated code, etc etc. All it takes is one uber-geek with a desire to spread knoweldge to break the backs of the ones who don't. And the world is a better place for them.

You are right, we'll always have opposing motivators and I respect that. The beauty of our system is that it forces us to meet at an agreeable mid point that gives me what I want at a price I'm willing to pay, and gives you a price you want for the level of effort you'r willing/able to put in. If neither of those conditions are met then we both have to move on to something else. Kind of like the Buggy Whip makers and people who can tune carburators. I don't feel sorry for them that their market disappeared / shrunk, nothin stopped them from changing with the times and taking advantage of a new market. I find the movie Other People's Money a great allegory of this exact idea.

94170008

In the spirit of the open source program it is in poor taste for the tuner to lock out the customer and conversely it is in poor taste for the customer not to respect the work of the tuner and either distribute or outright sell thier work.

Legally it will be tough to sort out, but if we are all as cool as the people that put there time in to creating Ecuflash for the common good it would be real nice...

I like to think that karma and reputation will reward those who choose the high road.

codgi

iTrader: (22)

That is where you are wrong. A customer is not paying for your knowledge. Because knowledge cannot be imparted to someone else, and even if it did, then that would mean that without an explicit agreement legally could resell that knowledge to someone else without your permission.

They are paying you for the time you spent to apply your knowledge to tune the car which becomes a service.

So if you take the Windows source code and change it to be something marginally different and then re-sell it, then Microsoft no longer has rights to it? I'm sure but I think you need to start reading some commercial software EULAs and pay close attention to the parts that talk about modification of code and what your rights are (i.e NONE).

But failing that, this line of logic is not applicable in this case which it is not. When you "tune" maps you aren't replacing code at all, you are changing values in the table no more than adding text to a word doc.


The only people that change code are the tephra's, Mrfred, jcs, joebee etc.

There will always be someone that will spend the time and effort and knock it over. 10 years ago the same thing was said about the new flashable Roms and look where we are today.

Too many ways to knock this system over. Any time you want to use logs to do verfication if you are storing them on the same system where the verification needs to be done, and the person you needs to verify has the access level to change that verification you are asking for it. Simple way to see this approach is not the way to do this is to ask: How does the Haltech know the day, date and time. Once you have answered that question, next answer how does the user set the day, date and time.

Its like we say in software, "If you have a malicious admin, the problem isn't with the software its with your company"

Indeed.

PessimiStick

iTrader: (2)

This is an important point. It has a very strong relation to software protection in general. When it comes right down to it, the basic problem is that you have 5 chimpanzees creating protection, and 5,000 trying to break it. No matter how smart your 5 chimps are, they're probably not going to win that battle.

Software companies have been coming up with more and more complex protection schemes since the 8086 days, and they are *always* cracked, and usually in very short order. There's no reason to expect that this trend would suddenly fail in the case of ECUs, as they are nothing more than computers with specialized instruction sets.

Dennis F

iTrader: (22)

You provide a service, much like a waitress. Does a waitress have any chance in hell in protecting her knowledge on how to serve food?

Lets say your car is running bad and you take it to a local mechanic and he does a tune up, plugs, wires etc and the car runs better now. Everything is fixed. You payed for his knowledge and parts to fix the car.

Your friend has the same problem with his car, can you tell your friend, hey, plugs and wires fixed my car?
Or would you say, "I can't say anything."

Just because you changed some numbers on a fuel table does not make you the mad scientist. You have no rights what so ever to lock an ECU unless you pay the customer to lock it. The customer makes the monthly payments on the car, NOT YOU.

Tuning a car is not even a trade that has any rights. Music is an industry with god knows how many ORIGINAL writers and singers.

Tuning is not original. Tuning is cleaning up a map.

Thank god your not my tuner, the ecu would be lodged somewhere not nice if it was locked.

Infact, I have a locked one here that is going to the east coast to find a darkplace to get shoved.

JohnBradley

iTrader: (30)

BEAR IN MIND I DO NOT LOCK ECU'S NOR DO I THINK ITS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. HOWEVER THERE ARE SOME COMMENTS THAT NEEDED ATTENTION LEST EVERYONE BELIEVE THESE WORDS AS GOSPEL...

Mechanical vs. Electronic isnt the same. Assuming everything is running correctly to begin with, tuning doesnt fix a problem like bad wires or plugs. His knowledge of knowing what to listen for might be along the same lines...I will give you that.

I also dont pay for the customer deciding at some point to get into the ECU and see what makes my tunes different from others. I dont pay for him to attempt to copy it and begin thinking he can be a tooner as well. I dont pay him to change it, blow up the car and then say it was my fault.

They have the rights that any business have if they have been setup as a legitimate business.

Tune an AEM and you'll realise what fails in the above statement. Then you'll see what a stock ECU and AEM have in common and realise it more. How many Evos came from the factory with 1200s and E85 tunes? How about intake pipe/filter combos that screw up the MAF? Cleaning a map indeed. How about configuring a feature that has been added in (such as Tephra's NLTS). Is it cleaning spending the life of my clutch and engine trying to make sure that the rpm drop is where it really needs to be when I launch, downshift, generally rail on my car before I set someone elses up with these predetermined values? Tuning is very original, since I gather you do not tune your car you do not see it as such.

If they did it without letting you know that was how they tune before they did it, then yes they deserve at least one ECU if not more.

PeteyTurbo

iTrader: (9)

IF someone wants to go ahead and try to lock a tune out of an ECU that they used FREE software to do it with, I will never hesitate to pass judgement. AEM would be a different story because with that you are using your OWN property to essentially make your own product. I think alot of the occasions on which this happens the tune is poorly matched for the setup and executed in the totally wrong way, but hey I could be wrong ..Good way to turn the tuning community away from your services I guess. I've had to unlock a few just to get people running right or pass inspection. Wouldn't we all love to be locked out of our ECU's running 22 counts of knock at peak torque? Dare we see that timing map!

JohnBradley

iTrader: (30)

I STILL DONT LOCK MAPS (just to be clear )

So while I agree with you Petey that its not cool, I think by and large people in this discussion dont tune on a daily basis and dont realise what it involves. Apparently you do and know the general ways an ECU can be locked (i.e. init code and ROM ID) and have unlocked them. 22 counts is horrible and I have seen similar tunes when former vendors here had products that were "uncontrollable" and allowed inconsistent boost control and then locked the map on top of it.

An AEM is no different. You buy the unit and have a base calibration (they call them that instead of a map for whatever reason) with a bunch of dummy values.

The software is free and anyone can download it and use it provided that they have a computer with a serial port or a good USB/Serial Adapter.

You set up the microsec bit and the fueling and the drivability. Basically applying everything you know and have learned to making a car work from the very basic level all the way to tuning for max reliability. It is considerably more work to set up and get functioning than a stock ECU since the stocker has 98% of this done for you. Point is you can pull that calibration off and put it on someone elses car and its alot closer than when you try this with a stock ECU map.

I have had to tune cars both ways and in various combinations. A stock ECU can be worse to tune with for drivability when you start factoring things like big cams, big injectors, big turbos, etc. You can do quite alot with the stock MAF and then someone says lets throw MAFT Pro or MAF Translator on and start all over. Now you have 2 computers to deal with and get set correctly.

Tuning is not cleaning a map, tuning requires alot of ingenuity to correctly use what tables are presented with what hardware and firmware in a given situation. Do I need to scale this differently to get enough control, should I crank the BISS rather than play with the IAC tables. Do I set all the IX high octane maps the same or not, etc. Tuning is far more original than most think and that includes some that are tuners.

I do not and will not lock maps. I know for a fact that some of my "work" has been plagiarized by others and in some cases bit for bit. Why? because I refuse to lock maps. In the end the Karma gets them since they always miss the details and rely on the basics (fuel and spark) and when the car falls short the customer goes elsewhere. I can think of 2 shops in the NW that have had a tuner use my maps, fail, and the customer comes to me and first thing I ask is "Have I ever tuned this?" Imagine my surprise when I hear NO, and then the place that "tuned" them and charged them more than I do for my own product only to sadly fail the customer and morally as well.

Jorge T

iTrader: (18)

I would be pissed if I purchased a tune then later find out my ecu was locked. If I'd been told beforhand that my ECU was going to be locked and I decided to get the tune then it was my decision, but I was given the chance to deny.

Locking an ECU needs to be a term agreed between the customer and the tuner. The tuner needs to disclose beforehand he will lock the ECU if you agree to his tune. Customer has the right to choose if he accepts or denies tuners conditions. If either one does not agree on terms then no deal. Simple as that.

It's all about simple honest business practices.

RazorLab

iTrader: (8)

Aaron I just use your maps, then I do a bunch of dyno pulls for the hell of it, look under the hood a couple times, then do a couple more pulls, then lock AND change the Rom ID.

Thanks again for all your hard work.