Michel Lavaud wrote:
If the plane I'm flying is built based on simulations with commercial
mathematical software tools, I surely want them to be the best.
If the plane I'm flying is built based on simulations with commercial
mathematical software tools, whose accuracy is guaranteed in the usual
way, i.e. no guarantee at all except refund for the price of the
software whatever consequences and it is forbidden to get the source
code to check if it is correct - then I will for sure take the next
plane, if it has been built with free Open Source software :-)
[snip]
I've heard this argument before -- it's fallacious on a number of
levels, and I don't have time to dig into it right now. But I want to
remind people that:
1. Aircraft used to be designed with slide rules and mechanical desk
calculators. The equations involved are "open source" in the sense that
everyone who is a professional aeronautical engineer learns them in
college, knows them intimately. What today's computers allow us to do is
build larger and more complex aviation systems that are more economical
on fuel.
2. Very few aircraft crashes are caused by design flaws of any kind, and
even fewer by incorrect software. Human error at the time of the flight
and sabotage/terrorism/military actions are the two main causes of
aircraft crashes. The only really blatant example of a design flaw
causing aircraft crashes I can remember was the DeHavilland Comet. That
was not a software flaw as far as I know -- I'm not even sure scientific
computers were available outside of the military when the Comet was
designed, and they would have been on the scale of a Von Neumann/IAS
machine, or maybe an IBM 704, if they were.
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