[SystemSafety] State of Things

[Peter Bernard Ladkin]

Folks,

The Safety-Critical Mailing list started at Uni York on 19th May, 1995 
https://abnormaldistribution.org/index.php/2010/04/07/engineering-discussions-of-discussions-the-york-list-after-15-years/ 


In my memory, there was extensive discussion of approaches to system safety, involving in particular 
the IEC standard 61508 on functional safety of equipment involving digital components. Rich, and 
rewarding.

In summer of 2012, Uni York in moved to IT services provided by Google, and suddenly many 
participants of the York mailing list were unable further to participate, due to their company 
protocols. My group at the Uni Bielefeld reacted: Jan Sanders set up a mailing list using Mailman in 
my faculty IT-admin and we invited anyone from the York list to join. Many did.

Discussion about system safety continued.

Recently, there have been many important themes in digital-sytem safety that have come to the fore. 
The revision of IEC 61508, a huge topic of discussion in the earlier years of the York list. The use 
of machine-learning SW in autonomous road vehicles and other safety-critical applications. 
Cybersecurity considerations about safety-critical systems and their resolution (if there is one).

None of these subjects has attracted much recent debate on the System Safety List. There may be many 
reasons for this, but one, I think, is that people just don't seriously debate on mailing lists any 
more.

The list is maintained through the good auspices of Michael Götting, head of the Bielefeld 
University Faculty of Technology IT services, Sascha Frey, and Christian Lange. All of these good 
and devoted people have much to work on (TechFak digital traffic is half of all traffic at UniBI, 
which supports over 20K students and myriad research groups).

I don't wish to burden my colleagues any longer with maintaining a list that is barely used. I 
propose to close the list on 2022-12-31.

I regret this development. I am firmly convinced that active open discussion is the best way to 
progress system safety, and the main practical way of enabling active open discussion is through 
email mailing lists. It seems this view is now "so 1990's". So be it. Maybe we should all move to 
TikTok.

I thank all contributors and listeners. It's been good, for a long while. 27+ years is not a bad run.

Best wishes to all,

PBL

Prof. i.R. Dr. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs-bi.de




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