[SystemSafety] Software Repositories

[Michael Jackson]

Cyber-physical systems are bipartite: one part is the computing equipment executing the software, the other is the relevant physical world (including human participating in the system behaviour).  For such a system, a "repository for very thoroughly inspected and tested software components" would need to include the physical problem world to be totally convincing. 

So for MCAS the repository should include a 737 Max-8. Perhaps there are current opportunities to snap one up quite cheaply.

Michael Jackson


> On 10 Jul 2020, at 15:31, Martyn Thomas <martyn at 72f.org> wrote:
> 
> This was Tony Hoare's originally stated plan for the Oxford Programming Research Group in (as I recall) the late 1970s. I don't know when or why he decided not to do it. 
> 
> Regards
> 
> Martyn
> 
> 
> 
> On 10/07/2020 15:12, Peter Bernard Ladkin wrote:
>> 
>> On 2020-07-10 11:14 , 
>> paul_e.bennett at topmail.co.uk
>>  wrote:
>> 
>>> If there was a body that would become the repository for very
>>> thoroughly inspected and tested software components that would have
>>> the reports of the voracity of such components stored together, we might
>>> stand a chance at pulling together systems that work well. 
>>> 
>> The idea of such a respository, and the organisation to put it together, as well as significant
>> resources put into it, goes back at least to the founding of Odyssey Research Associates by the
>> Cornell logician Dick Platek in the early 1980's.
>> 
>> The logician David Guattari worked for ORA for a long time, as I recall. The company became ORA
>> Canada and in Ottawa. Dan Craigen worked for them for a long time. They developed the Z/Eves system,
>> based on a theorem prover developed by Mark Saaltink. I visited them in Ottawa back in 1995.
>> 
>> ESA wanted to develop software for space uses as "building block" software, and some nearly 20 years
>> ago I was involved in the negotiations for the EU-supported ASSERT project to do that. Quite a lot
>> of renowned people involved, many of them in FM.
>> 
>> Progress towards the goal of a guaranteed-dependable SW library? Hard to see much, if any, in the
>> last almost-forty years.
>> 
>> PBL
>> 
>> Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany
>> Styelfy Bleibgsnd
>> Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  
>> www.rvs-bi.de
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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