> This software is by FAR the largest, most complex codebase I have ever interacted with. This is a problem. Edit: I want to add something. Serious 3rd party

> This software is by FAR the largest, most complex codebase I have ever interacted with. This is a problem. Edit: I want to add something. Serious 3rd party serious mechanical shops have had the ability to intervene on this kind of equipment - I suppose. The same way that independent serious and competent car repair shops exists. One problem we are about to all observe, and which actually has already began, is not typically that owners would like to rewrite the software and run their car/tractor/whatever with the modified/rewritten version. The problem is that vendors are taking the dangerousness argument and (mis)using it as an economic weapon in the same time to gain anticompetitive in the maintenance market -- like the comment to which I'm replying to does, in effect (concentrating on the risks of unrelated open changes, instead of discussing the initial problem! ) And moreover in the same time, car vendors, for example, have proven several time we can not trust them with critical software.