[SystemSafety] FMEA draft international standard

[John Knight]

Hi Ross,

I did not mean to imply that not-for-profit organizations should be 
deprived of essential revenue.  What I am looking for is for the cost of 
standards to be born by those who receive financial value from the 
standards.

All of the standards-development organizations are essential assets in 
the community.  I am anxious for them to remain financially healthy and 
to have a predictable economic model.

I have written up a few ideas about standards that go beyond but include 
the financial element.  At the risk of stirring up a lot of controversy, 
I note that a paper defining the ideas is available from the Safety 
Critical Systems Club:

http://scsc.org.uk/paper_126/protect_reg_01-Knight.pdf?pap=933

The SCSC has graciously agreed to allow this particular paper to be 
available at no cost to the community in part because of my stand on the 
cost of standards.

I am extremely grateful to the SCSC both for publishing the paper and 
for allowing it to be downloaded at no cost.

-- John

On 7/18/14, 12:02 PM, Ross Hannan - Sigma wrote:
>
> John -- Whilst I have sympathy with your position, I wanted to make 
> clear to readers that both RTCA and EUROCAE are not for profit 
> organizations that obtain their primary income from membership fees 
> and from the sale of the documents.
>
> Historically all RTCA and EUROCAE member organizations were given hard 
> copies of all publications as they were released (this is before 
> electronic copies were available) whether they had been involved in 
> the development of the documents or not. It was soon realised that 
> there was a certain futility in this as printing costs were high and 
> subsequent sales were low -- as most interested parties had already 
> been provided a copy of all of the documents.
>
> Next up, as Tom noted, active committee members were presented with a 
> set of the hard copy guidance/standards they had worked on by RTCA. A 
> few years ago this also changed, driven again by the cost of printing. 
> There was then a period where the chairs and secretaries of the 
> committee were asked to nominate a "few" people who had made 
> significant contributions and they were provided with a hard copy. 
> Nowadays there are no complimentary copies and EUROCAE has ceased 
> publication of hard copy documents completely. The ED-12C (DO-178C) 
> set of documents are only available electronically.
>
> Whether a model could be developed that satisfied RTCA and EUROCAE, 
> and I guess in many cases SAE, I don't know. There are a growing 
> number of users of the documents around the world and many other 
> Certification Authorities involved, and the model would need to 
> account for that.
>
> Ross Hannan
>
> *From:*systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de 
> [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] *On 
> Behalf Of *John Knight
> *Sent:* 18 July 2014 16:30
> *To:* systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
> *Subject:* Re: [SystemSafety] FMEA draft international standard
>
> On 7/16/14, 3:53 AM, Peter Bernard Ladkin wrote:
>
>     For example, John Knight has complained publicly that he cannot obtain copies of standards to which
>
>     he has himself contributed as a committee member without paying out large sums of money to which he
>
>     does not have access in his academic role. And his students thereby cannot study them. He is right.
>
>     Almost all academia is hindered from using actual - even past - standards in their teaching, at
>
>     least in the area in which I work. That seems to be absurd if the standards' claim to codify current
>
>     state of the art is true.
>
>
> Just to follow up on what Peter said here, I have proposed a model in 
> which:
>
>   * All standards from all sources are placed in the public domain.
>   * Authorities that use standards as part of certification require
>     that applicants pay a fee to the standards development
>     organization for using the standard.
>
> As an example, in my model RTCA DO-178C would be in the public 
> domain.  But any organization seeking certification from the FAA for 
> an avionics software system would pay a fee to RTCA.  The FAA would 
> require a copy of the receipt.
>
> This model provides the community with full access to the standards 
> and charges those who benefit commercially from standards rather than 
> the community at large.
>
> -- John
>

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