Musk, the World's First Trillionaire - Is He Worth It?

[Psi]

Musk did not start Tesla or Solar City. At least that is according to the results of an AI response I got. Although I knew about Tesla. The giveaway is they do not have an "X" in the name.

Correct, but with Tesla 99.9% of everything Tesla has done to become what they are today happened after he was in control. So I don't see why it matters that he didn't start Tesla.

I don't know anything about Solar City, so cant comment on that.

[EEVblog]

Musk did not start Tesla or Solar City. At least that is according to the results of an AI response I got. Although I knew about Tesla. The giveaway is they do not have an "X" in the name.

Yes, wording correction, but he did put almost half of his PayPal fortune into Tesla.
Basically, he got $180M for PayPal and put $100M into SpaceX, $70M into Tesla, and $10M into Solar City. He bet his entire fortune on those companies, he had nothing left.
SpaceX was one more flight failure away from likely going under. And Tesla was something like days away from going under, where he had to put his last cent into it, and get Roadster owner to pony up some extra down payment.
There is some sort of documentary on that, and they filmed it at the time. Forget the name of it.

IME if you have the guts to bet everything on your dream then you "earned" whatever the upside is. If someone can't at least agree on that (the premise of the OP question) then I'm afraid that they have EDS.

[wilfred]

Correct, but with Tesla 99.9% of everything Tesla has done to become what they are today happened after he was in control. So I don't see why it matters that he didn't start Tesla.

I agree Musk is a driving force that takes fledgling companies to great heights. It matters only so far as accuracy counts. If I saw someone with spinach on a tooth I would say you have a piece of spinach on your tooth. Does it really matter? I leave it for them to decide. It seems to me to be the right thing to do. 

[max.wwwang]

In fact, is anyone possibly worth $1 trillion?

That shouldn't be a question, because the alternative always ultimately ends in communism.

This sounds like that communism is bad is an axiom.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not pro-communism. But that's just as I'm not pro-capitalism.

Think from scratch, is communism inherently bad? Just because things you want aren't under you name? Suppose a world where there is no such a thing as possession of property, but likewise there is no poverty, and whenever you need a scooter, a Tesla EV, or a flight for vacation, you get one at your disposal, though none is under your name – they are under nobody's name – is that bad? Just thinking ...

The concepts of property, and its ownership, seem common to all cultures (is it so?) and are so deep-rooted, and originated from so ancient times, that they seem ingrained into human's brains as if part of the DNA. What if ... if there is so radical a change in human's way of thinking and seeing the world that nobody cares any longer if anything is owned by them?

Ultimately what is it that we are after, the freedom of getting something, or owning it? What good, or extra good, does owning something do, beyond the complete freedom you have with it (but just without ownership)?

Am I so biased? Or am I missing something so obvious?

[tszaboo]

Think from scratch, is communism inherently bad?

Because the only way it works, if you build a wall around it, with machine guns facing to the inside.
And yes, I know what I'm talking about, I was born in it.
I really suggest you close this discussion and move along.

[nctnico]

SpaceX has done a great job getting reliability and economics on satellite services. No argument there.
I just don't think that all the credit (and money) should flow to Musk.

Most pro-Musk people do not credit Musk for doing all the engineering work, or being solely responsible for all the success at all his companies. They credit Musk for finally creating companies where smart people are allowed to do awesome work rather than having their spirt for design crushed by upper management.
I think there's a lot of miss understanding as to why pro-Musk people are pro-Musk.  People hear pro-Musk supporters saying "Musk is so smart" and assume they are assigning all success to him when they are not.

This is the crux of it.
And again, you can actually hate Musk as a person, you can hate the way he does stuff, you can laugh at the stupid impractical ideas like Hyperloop, Starship point-to-point, and Mars colonies, and you can criticise the crazy valuations the market and people place on his hype. But you can't argue against the technical and business success he has ultimately created, and that top people WANT to work for him because it lets them get cool stuff down.

Probably but if you dig a little bit deeper I can't help noticing that a lot of progress is being made by cutting through red tape by bending the rules a bit and cutting corners. Take the door handles and FSD as examples of things on Tesla cars that look super cool but aren't really safe to use. Earl "Madman" Muntz and Howard Hughes come to mind when I think about Musk.

[brucehoult]

Musk did not start Tesla or Solar City. At least that is according to the results of an AI response I got. Although I knew about Tesla. The giveaway is they do not have an "X" in the name.

Musk wasn't in the room day #1 when Eberhard, Tarpenning, and Wright (who I've met later when he had his own company Wrightspeed [1]) decided to start a company, but he was there 6-9 months later when they were looking for seed money and he put in $6.5 million of the total ~$7.5 million at that point, and about $70m total before the roadster shipped.

Prior to that the company had existed on very limited personal savings from the others.

A 2009 legal settlement says Musk is a founder, so there's that.

[1] see this 2006 video of Ian Wright's own electric car. He from Dargaville, 50 km from where I live now, and brought it to a conference (actually un-conforence) in Warkworth in Febriary 2009 and gave demos and a talk.

[PlainName]

In fact, is anyone possibly worth $1 trillion?

That shouldn't be a question, because the alternative always ultimately ends in communism.

This sounds like that communism is bad is an axiom.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not pro-communism. But that's just as I'm not pro-capitalism.

It's one of those things where you can only see 100% one way or the other with no possibility of middle ground. As Dave kindly just demonstrated

In reality it should be possible to not be at an extreme. Take, for instance, the UK water companies. They used to be public and no-one thought about them, then they got sold off to private enterprises and things seemed to be pretty good. But Capitalism allowed investment firms to buy them out and now they are useless - we get droughts when it's been tipping down with rain, main road around here is closed for NINE MONTHS while they fix a leak due to lack of investment in infrastructure, sewage going straight down the rivers, etc. So bad the government had to tell 'em to damn well fix it or else, and they can charge some more for doing so. That extra charge that was meant to fix the water system went straight out the door as dividends. Communism starts to sound good with this (literal) shit going on.

The fix will be nationalised water companies again, just as we are thinking about renationalising the railways. That's kind of communism, isn't it? Public ownership so it is run for the benefit of the public and not foreign milli-billi-trillionaires. Capitalism still rules, but not for everything. See: a kind of middle ground no-one can discuss because it's not 100% for or against.

But... our car companies used to be nationalised. Look what happened to them. Our phone system used to be nationalised and it was complete shit. Months to get a line put in, modems had to be licensed, etc. They went private and it was a great time. Still is, I think, but those venture capitalists are lurking and looking for a nice money tree.

ISTM that it will all swing one way and go to shit, and the fix will be to push it the other way. Then that will eventually turn to shit and the fix is... you get the idea. Neither alone is the answer - it needs to be mostly this way with a bit of pressure from that way to keep it in line.

[tom66]

In fact, is anyone possibly worth $1 trillion?

That shouldn't be a question, because the alternative always ultimately ends in communism.

This sounds like that communism is bad is an axiom.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not pro-communism. But that's just as I'm not pro-capitalism.

"Capitalism is the worst economic system; apart from all of the others".  Humans are inherently greedy and want more.   Capitalism takes advantage of this and arguably has brought us the greatest development in science and technology for the last 100 years, by putting human ingenuity to work.   I think some form of capitalism is close to the ideal system (at least assuming resources are constrained, i.e. not Star Trek) but it requires a disciplined population willing to hold capitalists to account through politicians and personal decisions.  It works well enough in Nordic countries where you have strong economics but relatively low corruption (I am not saying there is no corruption, but compared to UK/USA...)  It doesn't work particularly well in some other countries.  You need a strong social safety net, a strong democracy and a media that is critical of the state and corporations, not one that is captured like it is in so many other countries.

The problem with communism is that no one really wants to live in a state where they have nothing but the most basic personal possessions.  People try to leave these states seeking better conditions, so borders get created to stop them leaving.  Media is suppressed because it will report how good it is on the other side of the wall.  Greed sets in and people acquire whatever power they can.  You see this in both how USSR was and post Soviet states with oligarchs retaining political control.  You also see it in China.  You can ask practically anyone who lived under communism if they would ever go back.  They will just laugh at you.  I would much rather live under Trump in the USA with bald eagles wielding machine guns than live in China under the CCP.  And I do not like Trump one bit at all.

It is also almost impossible to imagine how a communist state in the truest, Marx sense could come to be.  Arguably the USSR was not communist, it was merely pretending to be on the journey to communism.  It was more of an authoritarian state capitalist society, where the state controlled all industry.  True communism requires the state to "wither away" to nothing.  Lenin's supporters claim he was on the way to establishing this condition; he just so happened to murder thousands in doing so, and created an authoritarian state in the process.  It is unlikely that any communist state could practically exist because almost no one is willing to obtain absolute power and then give it up; the personal dynamics of a person or group of individuals able to seize this power, and then willing to relinquish that power later on, are so unlikely to actually exist that we can say it cannot happen in practice.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Think from scratch, is communism inherently bad?

As a means of governing humans, yes, because it is fundamentally incompatible with human nature.
Any system based on "equality" will fail because people are not equal.

[free_electron]

Communism doesn't work for one reason only : there is no incentive or motivation to do anything. The guy designing the next supercomputer lives in the same crappy apartment tower as the guy painting the lines in the parking lot. Both have to stand in line for bread.

[PlainName]

Both have to stand in line for bread

That's where communism has been implemented as authoritarianism. In proper communism, aren't the spoils shared out to everyone equally? The situation you quote is where the spoils go to the party and the plebs get the dregs.

[TimNJ]

It is also almost impossible to imagine how a communist state in the truest, Marx sense could come to be.  Arguably the USSR was not communist, it was merely pretending to be on the journey to communism.  It was more of an authoritarian state capitalist society, where the state controlled all industry.  True communism requires the state to "wither away" to nothing.  Lenin's supporters claim he was on the way to establishing this condition; he just so happened to murder thousands in doing so, and created an authoritarian state in the process.  It is unlikely that any communist state could practically exist because almost no one is willing to obtain absolute power and then give it up; the personal dynamics of a person or group of individuals able to seize this power, and then willing to relinquish that power later on, are so unlikely to actually exist that we can say it cannot happen in practice.

Sort of the argument I try to make when people here say "Oh my god, we can't elect X person; the country is going to collapse into communism!"....No it's not, it simply cannot. At best, the government will get a little more socialized (lean a little towards socialism), and that's "socialism" by US metrics (laughing in Danish). There is too much entrenched capital, too many vested interests, especially in this country, to allow that to ever happen. The idea that supporting any amount of social welfare or de-privatization of certain industries amounts to being a "commie" is an insane take, mostly a result of many years of indoctrination. No you should embrace unbridled capitalism, because look you can get a TV for $200! Ignore all that other stuff about your rent or hospital expenses.

Oh, this is an electronics forum?

[tom66]

Both have to stand in line for bread

That's where communism has been implemented as authoritarianism. In proper communism, aren't the spoils shared out to everyone equally? The situation you quote is where the spoils go to the party and the plebs get the dregs.

"Proper communism" doesn't exist in practice though.  In the ideal world in which a communist society exists, perhaps, you could say that individuals could be treated fairly and no one will be wanting for anything.  But, to be truly communist, such a society would be leaderless and without an executive body (otherwise it would have a "state", which is prohibited); how many of you know of groups that successfully manage without a leader?  You might manage a small group of, say, up to 100 people making collective decisions, but you can't viably expect an entire country to run like that, we know humans don't work like that. 

If you compromise and install a state and leaders, how do you ensure that the absolute power they hold does not corrupt them?  It is no longer the case that people would have power because they can own no businesses, no income, no assets and have no stake in the future of the country.  They are powerless, dependent upon the state for their every need, a very precarious position to be in.

This same experiment has been run many times over in many countries and not once has it resulted in more freedom for people.  Meanwhile capitalist societies have the highest freedom indexes of any states in the world.  Perhaps it could be argued this is because there are many more capitalist states, but it doesn't explain why communist states both current and historical have the worst freedoms for their people.  How many communist states are democracies?  Oh.

[nctnico]

Communism doesn't work for one reason only : there is no incentive or motivation to do anything. The guy designing the next supercomputer lives in the same crappy apartment tower as the guy painting the lines in the parking lot. Both have to stand in line for bread.

But there has to be some middle ground where everyone can live a decent life. In that respect organised religion typically has one thing right: looking after the poor. Even if it is to prevent the poor from rising up and cause mayhem. In a modern world it also means that governments should be in charge of primary needs like drinking water, electricity, food safety, roads, product safety, etc. Capitalism optimises for optimal number of casualties versus profit. Not zero casualties as a decent society should aim for. 'The yes men fix the world' is an interesting documentary to watch on that topic.

[PlainName]

Both have to stand in line for bread

That's where communism has been implemented as authoritarianism. In proper communism, aren't the spoils shared out to everyone equally? The situation you quote is where the spoils go to the party and the plebs get the dregs.

"Proper communism" doesn't exist in practice though.  In the ideal world in which a communist society exists, perhaps, you could say that individuals could be treated fairly and no one will be wanting for anything.  But, to be truly communist, such a society would be leaderless and without an executive body (otherwise it would have a "state", which is prohibited); how many of you know of groups that successfully manage without a leader?

Well, indeed. I'm not arguing for or against, just pointing out that using communism as a baby-eating devil just to stiff discussion is ridiculous.

[free_electron]

In that respect organised religion typically has one thing right: looking after the poor.

BAHAHAAAA. Best joke I've heard in a long time. Church : give us money and donations. Try getting something back. Thoughts and prayers and statements "if you pray hard enough God will provide". If god will provide there would be no need to donate to the church. If all those cardinals and priests and bishops are so good at praying they would not need to live off donations. God would provide. As it stands their wealth comes from the masses. not God.

Organised Religion : root of all evil. Mental terrorism (threatening you with eternal burning in hell. that's psychological terrorism).

Note: I am not making a statement against religion. If you want to believe in god , fine. If not, also fine. I'm making a statement against ORGANIZED. The moment a hierarchy comes into play you inevitably create a class system that evolves in a power rank of have's and have-not's.

[free_electron]

Both have to stand in line for bread

That's where communism has been implemented as authoritarianism. In proper communism, aren't the spoils shared out to everyone equally? The situation you quote is where the spoils go to the party and the plebs get the dregs.

I Still have vivid memories of the news in the 70's and 80's when i was a kid. images from Poland and USSR where people stood in line for hours trying to get bread only to find empty shelves. USSR was the wheat silo of the world. Then how come there was no bread ? cause they exported it to get money ! So where did the money go ?

History has proven over and over it does not work. Not as it was implemented.

[krish2487]

Counter point.. a quick chatgpt query returned the top 10 inventions, discoveries, research deliberately given away for free for the benefit of public in stem and medicine

f the criterion is "invented something that changed the world and deliberately gave it away or made it broadly accessible", these stand out:

Jonas Salk — Polio vaccine
Frederick Banting & Charles Best — Insulin
Tim Berners-Lee — World Wide Web
Vinton Cerf & Robert Kahn — TCP/IP
Linus Torvalds — Linux
Dennis Ritchie — C language
Donald Knuth — TeX
Rosalyn Yalow — Radioimmunoassay
Dilip Mahalanabis — Oral rehydration therapy
Human Genome Project — Open genomic data


and this is a more comprehensive list of 50 such works given away either for free or at a very low cost for the greater public good.

#   Invention / Discovery   Inventor(s)   How it was shared for the public good
1   Insulin therapy   Frederick Banting, Charles Best   Patent sold to University of Toronto for $1 each
2   Polio vaccine   Jonas Salk   Refused to patent it; "Could you patent the sun?"
3   Oral polio vaccine   Albert Sabin   Did not seek major personal profits
4   World Wide Web   Tim Berners-Lee   Released royalty-free
5   Hypertext web standards   Tim Berners-Lee   Open standards
6   UNIX (academic distribution)   Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie   Widely shared with universities
7   C programming language   Dennis Ritchie   Freely published and taught
8   TCP/IP protocols   Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn   Open networking standards
9   Email protocols (SMTP)   Jon Postel and colleagues   Open standards
10   DNS system   Paul Mockapetris   Public Internet infrastructure
11   Linux kernel   Linus Torvalds   Open-source GPL license
12   GNU software ecosystem   Richard Stallman   Free software movement
13   Public-key cryptography concept   Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman   Published openly
14   Diffie-Hellman key exchange   Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman   Open publication
15   RSA algorithm (academic release)   Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, Leonard Adleman   Published for scientific use
16   Open MRI techniques   Paul Lauterbur   Broad scientific publication
17   MRI imaging methods   Peter Mansfield   Open scientific dissemination
18   CT scan technology   Godfrey Hounsfield   Public medical benefit emphasized
19   Ultrasound imaging advances   Ian Donald   Freely shared clinical methods
20   Recombinant DNA methods   Herbert Boyer, Stanley Cohen   Low-cost licensing enabled biotech growth
21   PCR methodology dissemination   Kary Mullis   Widely published and adopted
22   Open publication of DNA structure   James Watson, Francis Crick   No patent on DNA structure
23   X-ray crystallography advances   Rosalind Franklin   Scientific publication
24   Radioimmunoassay   Rosalyn Yalow   Refused to patent
25   Hepatitis B vaccine groundwork   Baruch Blumberg   Focused on public health impact
26   Open-source statistical software R   Ross Ihaka, Robert Gentleman   Free software
27   TeX typesetting system   Donald Knuth   Freely distributed
28   LaTeX document system   Leslie Lamport   Freely shared
29   Apache web server   Apache Software Foundation   Open-source
30   Perl programming language   Larry Wall   Free software
31   Python programming language   Guido van Rossum   Open-source
32   BLAST bioinformatics tool   Stephen Altschul and team   Free scientific access
33   Human Genome Project data   Human Genome Project   Immediate public release
34   Gene sequence databases   National Center for Biotechnology Information   Open access
35   AIDS treatment activism model   ACT UP   Promoted broad access to therapies
36   Open-source prosthetics movement   Multiple researchers   Designs shared publicly
37   Cochlear implant improvements   Graeme Clark   Focus on patient access
38   Neonatal phototherapy   Jerold Lucey and colleagues   Rapid public dissemination
39   Oral rehydration therapy   Dilip Mahalanabis   Shared globally at low cost
40   Bubble CPAP neonatal care   George Gregory and colleagues   Public clinical adoption
41   Smallpox eradication tools   World Health Organization researchers   Global public-health effort
42   Open-source GIS software foundations   Multiple developers   Public licenses
43   ARPANET protocols   Research teams funded publicly   Open publication
44   BSD UNIX distribution   University of California, Berkeley teams   Open academic distribution
45   GIMP image editor   Open-source developers   Free software
46   VLC media framework roots   Open-source developers   Free software
47   Open medical databases   Academic consortia   Free research access
48   Open epidemiological surveillance methods   Public-health researchers   Shared internationally
49   Open weather modeling software   International researchers   Shared scientific infrastructure
50   Open-source scientific computing ecosystems   Global academic communities   Public licenses

Granted in the 50 list above, the end users might not know the original inventor but they are still reaping the benefits.
and a few entries are a bit hyperbole, but the point I m trying to make is that quite a lot of those in the list were not driven by the capitalistic need
to make money. Any one of the entries in the list above is enough to make the original creator / inventor very rich.
Capitalism, I rephrase, unbridled unchecked capitalism on the other hand exploits the work of many many such people who do it out of passion or interest
and makes money. It is a very very skewed system.

[free_electron]

Quote :

Patent Pledge
On June 12, 2014, Tesla announced that it will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use its technology. Tesla was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport, and this policy is intended to encourage the advancement of a common, rapidly-evolving platform for electric vehicles, thereby benefiting Tesla, other companies making electric vehicles, and the world. These guidelines provide further detail as to how we are implementing this policy.

Source : https://www.tesla.com/legal/additional-resources

They also gave away the design for the "Tesla charging connector" ( now called NACS) . Nobody wanted it. because of NIH ( not invented here), instead the establishment came up with horrific charging connecters like Chademo and CCS1. Ugly, heavy designs that can't even handle the power the slim NACS can.

Even the schematics of the original roadster are available. including circuit boards

[krish2487]

Quote :

Patent Pledge
On June 12, 2014, Tesla announced that it will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use its technology. Tesla was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport, and this policy is intended to encourage the advancement of a common, rapidly-evolving platform for electric vehicles, thereby benefiting Tesla, other companies making electric vehicles, and the world. These guidelines provide further detail as to how we are implementing this policy.

Source : https://www.tesla.com/legal/additional-resources

They also gave away the design for the "Tesla charging connector" ( now called NACS) . Nobody wanted it. because of NIH ( not invented here), instead the establishment came up with horrific charging connecters like Chademo and CCS1. Ugly, heavy designs that can't even handle the power the slim NACS can.

Even the schematics of the original roadster are available. including circuit boards

Oh yes, I remember this..
and to that I say "The seatbelt"

Your post reminded me that Volvo gave away the design for the 3 point seatbelt literally because it would save lives.
The NIH syndrome is not really a strong argument here.

[tszaboo]

In that respect organised religion typically has one thing right: looking after the poor.

BAHAHAAAA. Best joke I've heard in a long time. Church : give us money and donations. Try getting something back. Thoughts and prayers and statements "if you pray hard enough God will provide". If god will provide there would be no need to donate to the church. If all those cardinals and priests and bishops are so good at praying they would not need to live off donations. God would provide. As it stands their wealth comes from the masses. not God.

Organised Religion : root of all evil. Mental terrorism (threatening you with eternal burning in hell. that's psychological terrorism).

Note: I am not making a statement against religion. If you want to believe in god , fine. If not, also fine. I'm making a statement against ORGANIZED. The moment a hierarchy comes into play you inevitably create a class system that evolves in a power rank of have's and have-not's.

I'm perfectly fine telling people that they shouldn't kill, to be respectful, and shouldn't steal.. otherwise they will burn in hell forever. Not everyone is sophisticated enough to understand that basic Cristian or Buddhist or Jewish morality teachings lead to a high trust society, and prosperity. If you have to tell to some people, that otherwise the man in the sky is going to get angry, so be it.
The alternative is... well you can see what the alternative is. Some people should be made to believe that god will smite them with a lightning if they act like a*holes, and then they don't act as a*holes.

communism as a baby-eating devil just to stiff discussion is ridiculous.

Nah, just another few tens of millions of dead, trust me bro, this time it's different. You see that wasn't proper communism.

[tom66]

The Tesla patent pledge contained this nugget:

Tesla irrevocably pledges that it will not initiate a lawsuit against any party for infringing a Tesla Patent through activity relating to electric vehicles or related equipment for so long as such party is acting in good faith. [...]

A party is "acting in good faith" for so long as such party and its related or affiliated companies have not:

* asserted, helped others assert or had a financial stake in any assertion of (i) any patent or other intellectual property right against Tesla or (ii) any patent right against a third party for its use of technologies relating to electric vehicles or related equipment;
* challenged, helped others challenge, or had a financial stake in any challenge to any Tesla patent; or
* marketed or sold any knock-off product (e.g., a product created by imitating or copying the design or appearance of a Tesla product or which suggests an association with or endorsement by Tesla) or provided any material assistance to another party doing so.

https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/legal/additional-resources#patent-pledge

Whilst the 3rd condition is reasonable enough, the 1st and 2nd conditions effectively require you to give access to your patents, because if you use a Tesla patent via the pledge, you cannot then sue Tesla if they use one of yours, even if that is not licenced use.

It therefore limits the scope of the patent pledge to much smaller entities than Tesla, and arguably makes it almost meaningless.  Tesla is essentially saying, if you forget about your patents, we'll forget about ours.  There's also the argument that any investor in a company using a Tesla patent could be caught out on the 2nd term (since they might end up being considered "affiliated" by Tesla, and eventually, a court). 

[PlainName]

Both have to stand in line for bread

That's where communism has been implemented as authoritarianism. In proper communism, aren't the spoils shared out to everyone equally? The situation you quote is where the spoils go to the party and the plebs get the dregs.

I Still have vivid memories of the news in the 70's and 80's when i was a kid. images from Poland and USSR where people stood in line for hours trying to get bread only to find empty shelves. USSR was the wheat silo of the world. Then how come there was no bread ? cause they exported it to get money ! So where did the money go ?

History has proven over and over it does not work. Not as it was implemented.

Sure, I remember those. But that wasn't communism per se, just some top dog trying it on much like the Orange One is doing now. Do the Eastern countries look at the US and go "There's democracy for you! Look at the kings bossing the proles around, and such corruption!"?

[Smokey]

The Tesla patent pledge contained this nugget:

Tesla irrevocably pledges that it will not initiate a lawsuit against any party for infringing a Tesla Patent through activity relating to electric vehicles or related equipment for so long as such party is acting in good faith. [...]

A party is "acting in good faith" for so long as such party and its related or affiliated companies have not:

* asserted, helped others assert or had a financial stake in any assertion of (i) any patent or other intellectual property right against Tesla or (ii) any patent right against a third party for its use of technologies relating to electric vehicles or related equipment;
* challenged, helped others challenge, or had a financial stake in any challenge to any Tesla patent; or
* marketed or sold any knock-off product (e.g., a product created by imitating or copying the design or appearance of a Tesla product or which suggests an association with or endorsement by Tesla) or provided any material assistance to another party doing so.

https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/legal/additional-resources#patent-pledge

Whilst the 3rd condition is reasonable enough, the 1st and 2nd conditions effectively require you to give access to your patents, because if you use a Tesla patent via the pledge, you cannot then sue Tesla if they use one of yours, even if that is not licenced use.

It therefore limits the scope of the patent pledge to much smaller entities than Tesla, and arguably makes it almost meaningless.  Tesla is essentially saying, if you forget about your patents, we'll forget about ours.  There's also the argument that any investor in a company using a Tesla patent could be caught out on the 2nd term (since they might end up being considered "affiliated" by Tesla, and eventually, a court).

why would essentially forcing reciprocity not be as noble as the original pledge?  Isn't the whole point to share tech and get better together?   It's not "free as in beer" but neither are most of the open source licenses everyone knows and loves.