Re: Would You Fly an Airplane with a Linux-Based Control System?

[Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>]

>>>>> "Simon" == Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org> writes:

    Simon> bitbucket@invalid-domain-see-sig.nil (Robert Kaiser)
    Simon> writes:

    >> Very True. In fact, I think open source even has (or could
    >> have) an advantage in mission critical applications because of
    >> the potentially huge number and skill of reviewers.

    Simon> They have to be competent and -- possibly more difficult --
    Simon> motivated!

open source doesn't mean unpaid for...

If a company really wants an open source solution, they can pay
programmers to write and maintain it. They can sell the hardware with
the source code to the customer giving the customer the security they
can check every line of the code independently for safety if they so
desire (and not just take the companies word for it when it says it is
"safe").

I doubt this is going to happen though, for a variety of reasons. One
such reason is if the customer has access to the source code,
presumably they can change it; I doubt the aviation authorities are
going to like this... In this country, for instance to get a GPS
receiver that is rated for GPS non-precision-approaches, the software
*must* be written so that GPS way points cannot be updated accept via
approved update.
-- 
Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>