[SystemSafety] What do we know about software reliability?

Jon Hind jon at jonhind.co.uk
Wed Sep 16 17:01:24 CEST 2020


I guess if their software is guaranteed, they would have some of liability
insurance, so some actuary somewhere has done some kind of numbers ?


On Wed, 16 Sep 2020, 15:56 Martyn Thomas, <martyn at 72f.org> wrote:

> On 16/09/2020 14:10, Lorenzo Strigini wrote:
>
> > The statement "reliability is an attribute of an organisation not a
> software or systems product" does not seem to be about whether a product is
> reliable enough, or whether assessing product reliability makes sense. It
> is about one way that people may guess whether something will be reliable
> enough when in use: by assessing whether the organisation from which it
> comes is good. Nothing to object to that.  Yet some customers demand
> stronger evidence than "the vendor is a good vendor". One form of this
> extra evidence is statistical evidence about that specific product not
> failing when exercised in the same conditions (as far as feasible) in which
> it will be used.
> > (And if the vendor does try to gain that statistical evidence instead of
> just trusting "I am a good organisation with good processes, so all my
> products must be good enough", well, that adds to the trust one can have in
> that vendor).
>
> One might ask "under what constraints will you warrant that your
> software will not fail?". If a vendor won't bet their company on their
> software, why should you bet yours?
>
> I understand that Altran UK give warranties (and refuse to offer cheaper
> prices without the warranty).  I don't know their contractual details.
>
> Martyn
>
>
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