M. Edward (Ed) Borasky a écrit :
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.
Ah dear, you win, I confess I am unable to refute your argument. So,
after closed source programs, we have now closed source arguments! Very
clever. Can I buy a licence ? (Ok, just a joke:-))
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.
Yes of course, I don't deny the usefulness of computers for aviation. As
for "open source" equations : we inherited the old traditional
scientific way of not selling knowledge. In the new framework of
so-called "economy of knowledge" (which is, in my opinion, an oxymoron,
but that's another story), that promote to put property rights on
knowledge, this will not be the case any more. That's one of my points :
the trend (i.e. the derivative) is that the situation will go worse,
i.e. less and less "open source" equations, if we scientists do not stop
this trend by realizing that selling scientific software and more
generally selling knowledge is "tuer la poule aux oeufs d'or" (don't
know in English : "kill the hen with golden eggs"?)
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.
Yes, OK : in the times when computers were inexistant, I agree it is
highly improbable that plane crashes were caused by sofware errors :-)
However, in the times when they existed and were used, I would bet that
most numerical computations for planes were made in Fortran, and Fortran
is the exception :that confirms the rule : there are many free libraries
of subroutines in this language, and some (if not all ?) commercial
libraries of subroutines are sold with the source code. But maybe I'm
wrong ?
Best wishes,
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