We decided to open source Veecle OS
For centuries, business was simple: build something, protect the recipe, sell it.
Coca-Cola locked its formula in a vault. Michelin guarded its rubber compounds like crown jewels. Even if you had the recipe, it wouldn’t help — nobody keeps a tire factory in their garage. Manufacturing was the moat.
Then came software. And the walls came down.
For the first time, the real value wasn’t poured, moulded, or assembled. It was thought captured as code. Copying it was trivial. Sharing it, instantaneous. What once required steel and glass suddenly fit on a thumb drive.
The Brain, Not the Muscle
In 1800, scientists thought the brain was a kind of muscle. Bigger brain, stronger person. Today, we know better: the brain is software. Cars are no different. The body is just the muscle — steel, wheels, horsepower. The real differentiation is the brain inside. The software decides how safe, how smart, how alive the car feels.
A Tesla can wake up overnight with shorter braking distance. A sedan from an incumbent carmaker wakes up to a recall letter and a lukewarm coffee in the dealer lobby.
The Open Source Paradox
So why would anyone give that brain away? Isn’t that commercial suicide?
History says otherwise. Linux powers the world’s servers. Apache and NGINX run the Internet. Android dominates smartphones. They didn’t die because they were open. They thrived because anyone could try them, test them, trust them.
Openness doesn’t kill value. It multiplies it.
And the freer the license, the wider the adoption. MIT and Apache licences invite corporations in. GPL, with its restrictions, spreads slower. The paradox is simple: the more you give away, the more people use it.
The Turning Point
We’ve seen this story before. Europe once built the toughest phones in the world. You could hammer a nail with a Nokia, pick it back up, and still call your mum. But when Apple and Google made smarter phones instead of stronger ones, the game changed — and hardware alone wasn’t enough.
Cars are now at that same crossroads. The industry still treats software like an afterthought — a feature frozen at production. That’s why, when something needs fixing, you’re called back to the dealer for an update that takes hours while you sip your lukewarm coffee.
Meanwhile, the newcomers have already flipped the script: software comes first, hardware follows. They treat the vehicle as a living product, updated and improved continuously, not locked in the day it rolls off the line.
This isn’t just a European problem. It’s a global one. And whoever masters the software foundation for vehicles will set the pace for the entire industry.
For carmakers, the advantage is clear: our open source Veecle OS provides a common, trustworthy foundation. No more black boxes, no lock-in — everyone starts from the same baseline.
On top of that, our commercial Veecle Development Studio turns this foundation into a complete workflow: simulate architectures, automate testing, and deploy features in days instead of months — all in-house, without waiting on suppliers.
"The old rule was: ship it and forget it. The new rule is: ship it, improve it, and keep it alive."
By putting it in the open, we accelerate trust. Developers can read the code, fork it on a Sunday afternoon, or run it at home. Corporates can adopt it without fear and their first try doesn’t require the procurement department. And the whole industry gains a shared base to innovate on — instead of every OEM burning billions reinventing wiper logic.
"We don’t lose by opening it. We win by making it the default. The old rule was: guard your recipe. The new rule is: become the recipe everyone else cooks with. And in cars, that recipe is software."