[SystemSafety] Making Standards available to Standards Committees

[Les Chambers]

Peter
Thanks for that. I will be at a university alumni function this Thursday. I intend to pursue this matter with my old electrical engineering department. If I can convince them to request a copy for the engineering library who should they communicate with? 
I am assuming your answer will be: "follow-up with standards Australia," but for the purposes of this list if you are in Europe and want to do the same, who would be an appropriate contact?

I, I think like yourself, view software engineering as a vocation. I don't believe we should let this matter rest. Just about all the greenfields application areas for software these days are safety or security related or both. The planet cannot afford to have graduates coming out of universities with no concept of what functional safety means. If anyone on this list feels the same way I'd encourage them to engage with the universities that gave them this vocation and pursue the matter. Nothing will happen unless pressure is constantly applied.

Les

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Bernard Ladkin [mailto:ladkin at rvs.uni-bielefeld.de] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2016 11:01 PM
To: Les Chambers; 'The System Safety List'
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Making Standards available to Standards Committees



On 2016-05-10 13:37 , Les Chambers wrote:
> IEC 61508:2010 CMV  Commented version, Price:  CHF 3169.00 (AUD 4436).
> 
> This puts it out of the reach of most private individuals, especially students.

Yes. Very unfortunate. That's why John Knight, Martyn Thomas, myself and others have been complaining about this business model for years. It's not just the IEC and ISO. RTCA and EUROCAE have even more restrictive models.

Rumor has it that IEC 61508 is the biggest money-spinner for the IEC.

> I was wondering if the IEC has any plan to donate copies to universities or place copies in libraries. 

I don't know of any. Different countries have different arrangements for access, many of them inconvenient for the general public or students.

In Britain, the IET has copies, which can be referenced if you are a member (but they are no longer held directly in the library in Savoy Place). And the BSI in Chiswick has all BSs, which are (often?
always?) identical to the ISO & IEC standards where these exist. I don't know what the Standards Australia arrangements are.

> The reason I ask is that I had a visit from a third-year software engineering student this week. She was looking for intern work. 
> She had never heard of 61508 or the concept of functional safety.

Yes, I see that as part of a big problem in engineering education in general. Standards are very important in engineering, and one part of knowing about standards is knowing which ones exist.
Another part is knowing what is wrong, in engineering terms, with existing standards, and of course you can't know that unless you can read them. And you can't fix it unless there is access to the standards-development process.

> Some measures clearly need to be taken to put functional safety 
> concepts in the hands (and minds) of the next generation of software engineers.
> 
> Is anything afoot?

I wish I could say yes.

Tim Kelly and Ron Bell have been running Summer Schools in Cambridge for years, and here in Germany the various TÜVs regularly put on their dog-and-pony shows. But they all cost money (fees + travel
expenses) which most individuals do not have.

Derek's suggestion to look at Indian standards is fine if you are content with a copy of a twenty-year-old standard.

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany Je suis Charlie
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de