[nycbug-talk] interesting read

[Marc Spitzer]

On 5/21/05, Bob Ippolito <bob at redivi.com> wrote:
> 
> On May 21, 2005, at 11:28 AM, alex at pilosoft.com wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 21 May 2005, Bob Ippolito wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>> Let's keep in mind that the trustworthiness of a life-critical
> >>>> application has everything to do with how that program was written
> >>>> and absolutely nothing to do with the license under which it was
> >>>> released.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> Okay. Back to original question. What is the benefit for you to be
> >>> able to recompile source code for your pacemaker?
> >>>
> >>
> >> Independent audits.
> >>
> > Orthogonal to open source.
> 
> I don't know where you learned the word orthogonal, but that's
> certainly not what it meant in my math classes.  Open source implies
> that audits are possible, so they're not statistically independent.

I have to go with Alex on this one, to audit the code you would need to know:

1: enough about how the heart works to comment on design decisions,
optimizing for speed where needed and space everywhere else.

2: know the hardware and software *very* well and these are, I would
think, all fairly to very custom embedded systems, for example X is
stupid in C but great in forth.

And you would need to accept the fact you might just get sued out of
existence for your opinion.  Think about it someone dies and a lawyer
smells money so he decided to sue all involved because it costs him
nothing to add you to the suit.  Now you need a good lawyer for a long
time and they want cash generally.

ike,

even if it is in python you are not qualified to have an opinion about
the code that runs your granddads heart.


marc