[SystemSafety] The VW Saga

Mon Oct 12 11:15:18 CEST 2015

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On 2015-10-12 10:48 , RICQUE Bertrand (SAGEM DEFENSE SECURITE) wrote:
> It depends.

It sure does!

(I'm slowly beginning to think this is your way of saying "Hi everyone!" :-) )

> It raises interesting questions. Can the retrofit be mandatory ? How can the usual periodic
> tests (very generic) discover a problem designed to be hidden ?

The questions are indeed interesting, and complicated. I raised this issue a while ago (in 2014, I
think) privately. Both colleagues thought one could never get companies to agree to open up their
SW IP (as Naughton points out, an increasing portion of the value of a product) to third-party
inspection. But one of them thinks it an appropriate measure, as I do.

It can't be impossible. For a long time, companies have had to open their finances to independent
inspection once a year. For financial companies (some of the very biggest companies), almost their
entire IP consists in that. It also doesn't always work (Enron, WorldCom, Lehmann, Madoff). But it
mostly does.

So it can be done. What's different about the case for SW?

It would have to be done through legal instrument, as with finances. And if just one country
passes such a law, then there is the danger that multinationals will just stop selling their
products there.

But I bet there's a way somehow.

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany
Je suis Charlie
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de