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Open Source Power Government Linux

'Linux Foundation Energy' Partners With US Government on Interoperability of America's EV Charging (substack.com) 21

The non-profit Linux Foundation Energy hopes to develop energy-sector solutions (including standards, specifications, and software) supporting rapid decarbonization by collaborating with industry stakeholders.

And now they're involved in a new partnership with America's Joint Office of Energy — which facilitates collaboration between the federal Department of Energy and its Department of Transportation. The partnership's goal? To "build open-source software tools to support communications between EV charging infrastructure and other systems."

The Buildout reports: The partnership and effort — known as "Project EVerest" — is part of the administration's full-court press to improve the charging experience for EV owners as the industry's nationwide buildout hits full stride. "Project EVerest will be a game changer for reliability and interoperability for EV charging," Gabe Klein, executive director of the administration's Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, said yesterday in a post on social media....

Administration officials said that a key driver of the move to institute broad standards for software is to move beyond an era of unreliable and disparate EV charging services throughout the U.S. Dr. K. Shankari, a principal software architect at the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, said that local and state governments now working to build out EV charging infrastructure could include a requirement that bidding contractors adhere to Project EVerest standards. That, in turn, could have a profound impact on providers of EV charging stations and services by requiring them to adapt to open source standards or lose the opportunity to bid on public projects. Charging availability and reliability are consistently mentioned as key turnoffs for potential EV buyers who want the infrastructure to be ready, easy, and consistent to use before making the move away from gas cars.

Specifically, the new project will aim to create what's known as an open source reference implementation for EV charging infrastructure — a set of standards that will be open to developers who are building applications and back-end software... And, because the software will be available for any company, organization, or developer to use, it will allow the creation of new EV infrastructure software at all levels without software writers having to start from scratch. "LF Energy exists to build the shared technology investment that the entire industry can build on top of," said Alex Thompson of LF Energy during the web conference. "You don't want to be re-inventing the wheel."

The tools will help communication between charging stations (and adjacent chargers), as well as vehicles and batteries, user interfaces and mobile devices, and even backend payment systems or power grids. An announcement from the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation says this software stack "will reduce instances of incompatibility resulting from proprietary systems, ultimately making charging more reliable for EV drivers." "The Joint Office is paving the way for innovation by partnering with an open-source foundation to address the needs of industry and consumers with technical tools that support reliable, safe and interoperable EV charging," said Sarah Hipel, Standards and Reliability Program Manager at the Joint Office.... With this collaborative development model, EVerest will speed up the adoption of EVs and decarbonization of transportation in the United States by accelerating charger development and deployment, increase customizability, and ensure high levels of security for the nation's growing network.
Linux Foundation Energy adds that reliable charging "is key to ensuring that anyone can confidently choose to ride or drive electric," predicting it will increase customizability for different use cases while offering long-term maintainability, avoiding vendor-lock in, and ensuring high levels of security. This is a pioneering example of the federal government collaborating to deploy code into an open source project...

"The EVerest project has been demonstrated in pilots around the world to make EV charging far more reliable and reduces the friction and frustration EV drivers have experienced when a charger fails to work or is not continually maintained," said LF Energy Executive Director Alex Thornton. "We look forward to partnering with the Joint Office to create a robust firmware stack that will stand the test of time, and be maintained by an active and growing global community to ensure the nation's charging infrastructure meets the needs of a growing fleet of electric vehicles today and into the future."

Thanks to Slashdot reader ElectricVs for sharing the article.
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'Linux Foundation Energy' Partners With US Government on Interoperability of America's EV Charging

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  • by hirschma ( 187820 ) on Sunday February 04, 2024 @01:11PM (#64213078)

    The co-opting of Linux and Open Source is largely complete, and the enshittification is not far behind. The Linux Foundation members are largely not our friends. See:

    https://lunduke.locals.com/pos... [locals.com]

    • by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Sunday February 04, 2024 @01:17PM (#64213090)

      If open source and the GPL are so susceptible to enshittification then I think it also has to be examined how we can adapt the GPL to suit the environment it has grown into. 70% violation rate means something is systemically wrong.

      I think this is a bit of a case of being a victim of it's own success and I would like to find a way for corporations who want to use more open source code to feel incentivized to push contributions back.

      • They are not easily susceptible, as they survived multiple decades already, but the effort of enshittification seems to produce results.... Nothing lasts forever and now there are big money at work, this foundation top members as Microsoft and Google.

        • Good thing i didn't use the word "easily", please don't sneak that in on me.

          Also that's my point. It's ostensibly a good thing if you want more Linux adoption in the world that the big companies are involved and like exactly I said they need an incentive to make sure they contribute back and if the GPL isn't working like we want well then lets fix those problems.

          MS and Google being on a Linux Foundation is a good thing for Linux

    • by Anonymous Coward
      That link is to a teaser article on a paywall site. The writing is comparable to the shitbag clickbait ads on CNN with pictures of fake deadly animals and colon blow products. Grandstanding self promotion, no insight. Fuck you for promoting this scum.
    • In the not so distant past it was the progressive types running Linux. You know long haired hippie dudes from Berkeley. Nowadays on the political spectrum Ronald Reagan sits closer to them than the current party.

    • by WDot ( 1286728 )
      It’s not about Linux, it’s about the “Foundation.” They are a non-profit, and like any non-profit they have to find a way to keep the lights on, and that mainly means chasing government grants. So they work on finding funding opportunities that tangentially relate to their area of expertise, and try to write proposals that are attractive to sponsors. If there’s government money out there for solving energy problems, Linux Foundation will find a way to tell a story where investm
  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday February 04, 2024 @01:16PM (#64213086)

    Interoperability is a solved problem, it's called Open Charge Point Protocol [wikipedia.org] and if you make it a requirement then suddenly, problem fucking solved. In Europe they already require it and guess who doesn't have this exact problem? EUROPE.

    It's just really frustrating having ignorant rubes in charge of things they don't know a damn thing about.

    • Better late than never but it looks like the FHWA is somewhat requiring it now since the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.

      680.108 Interoperability of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

      (a) Charger-to-EV communication. Chargers must conform to ISO 15118–3 and must have hardware capable of implementing both ISO 15118–2 and ISO 15118–20. By February 28, 2024, charger software must conform to ISO 15118–2 and be capable of Plug and Charge. Conformance testing for charger software and

      • (a) Charger-to-EV communication. Chargers must conform to ISO 15118–3 and must have hardware capable of implementing both ISO 15118–2 and ISO 15118–20. By February 28, 2024, charger software must conform to ISO 15118–2 and be capable of Plug and Charge. Conformance testing for charger software and hardware should follow ISO 15118–4 and ISO 15118–5, respectively.

        Ahh ISO specs. The ones you have to pay per-copy to read. 10 engineers, pay for 10 copies. Even if you wrote the spec.

    • by gQuigs ( 913879 )

      "With the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Standards requiring that EV chargers conform to Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) 2.0.1 no later than February 28, 2024, it is urgent that charger manufacturers consider a standardized reference implementation that is OCPP 2.0.1 compatible such as EVerest. "

      It's a shared implementation so everyone doesn't need to write their own.

      Standards do help solve problems, but I've certainly had plenty of compatibility issues between different implementations o

    • by jmccue ( 834797 )

      Interoperability is a solved problem

      true, but you need to remember how board members work :)

      The board members filters most money from the Foundation to themselves or friends. Most board members are on multiple boards. So, they support this initiative, thus a bigger pay check. That initiative will support another project and so and so. It is like a merry-go-round of board members getting more $. Kind of like money laundering, but legal.

      If the foundation had to pay real $ to programmers to say Fix Xorg, they would not get the extra $ from

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