[SystemSafety] Software reliability (or whatever you would prefer to call it)

[RICQUE Bertrand (SAGEM DEFENSE SECURITE)]

Yes Michael. But there is a huge difference between aeronautics and non regulated industries. Speaking about France primarily, the inspectors are not engineers or technicians. They base their decision almost exclusively on administrative processes. They tend to consider the engineers of the end-user as more competent than they are themselves, which is usually true.

Bertrand Ricque
Program Manager
Optronics and Defence Division
Sights Program
Mob : +33 6 87 47 84 64
Tel : +33 1 58 11 96 82
Bertrand.ricque at sagem.com

From: systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of C. Michael Holloway
Sent: Friday, March 06, 2015 2:21 PM
To: systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Software reliability (or whatever you would prefer to call it)

On 3/6/15 6:18 AM, RICQUE Bertrand (SAGEM DEFENSE SECURITE) wrote:


The aim is to find a way to convince an authority (which is far from demonstrating something to a scholar) ...
In my experience, demonstrating something to a "scholar" may be often easier than convincing an "authority". That is, at least some scholars seem to be swayed by arguments of dubious cogency and evidence of questionable credibility that would not sway many, if any, approval authorities.  The temptation to cite this thread (and its predecessors) as supporting evidence is strong, but I shall resist it.

To be slightly less snarky, I'll elaborate a little bit in very generic terms.

Consider some sub-field of study R. Very smart (and, as with all fields, some not-so-smart) academics are involved in R.  Many papers are published.  Many of these papers carefully enumerate the conditions C necessary for R to be relevant.  For most of the researchers in R, mentioning C is important for reasons of integrity, but irrelevant for their work, because they are only interested in situations in which C holds.

Suppose that in the real world, C never, or almost never, holds.  Scholars may likely continue to believe that R is a field worth studying and continue to produce results and continue to seek to convince each other that one approach is a better than another.  But approval authorities will not, and should not, be convinced that R should be used in systems they approve, because C does not hold for those systems.

--
cMh

C. Michael Holloway, Senior Research Engineer
Safety Critical Avionics Systems Branch, Research Directorate
NASA Langley Research Center / MS 130 Hampton VA 23681-2199 USA

The words in this message are mine alone; neither blame nor credit NASA for them.
#
" Ce courriel et les documents qui lui sont joints peuvent contenir des informations confidentielles, être soumis aux règlementations relatives au contrôle des exportations ou ayant un caractère privé. S'ils ne vous sont pas destinés, nous vous signalons qu'il est strictement interdit de les divulguer, de les reproduire ou d'en utiliser de quelque manière que ce soit le contenu. Toute exportation ou réexportation non autorisée est interdite Si ce message vous a été transmis par erreur, merci d'en informer l'expéditeur et de supprimer immédiatement de votre système informatique ce courriel ainsi que tous les documents qui y sont attachés."
******
" This e-mail and any attached documents may contain confidential or proprietary information and may be subject to export control laws and regulations. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that any dissemination, copying of this e-mail and any attachments thereto or use of their contents by any means whatsoever is strictly prohibited. Unauthorized export or re-export is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please advise the sender immediately and delete this e-mail and all attached documents from your computer system."
#
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/mailman/private/systemsafety/attachments/20150306/fe1da297/attachment-0001.html>