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There’s a difference between requiring source code as a precondition for selling and stopping sales of a product on documented safety concerns and requiring par
by kentm 8y ago
There’s a difference between requiring source code as a precondition for selling and stopping sales of a product on documented safety concerns and requiring participation in an investigation to resume sales. It’s down to whether the law is correctly written to distinguish the two.
- yellowapple 8y agoPersonally, I'd much prefer proactive auditing (i.e. requiring source code) over waiting until someone is injured and possibly killed to launch an investigation. Transparency is a dependency of trust. There's no going around that. If a product is not transparent, then it is not trustworthy, period. I'm not at all inclined to wait for something to violate my trust further before demanding a prerequisite for that trust. Governments shouldn't be so inclined, either, especially when it comes to human safety.
- adrianN 8y agoI'd also like that, but even today there is lots of software that can kill people if it contains bugs. It is usually enough that the makers can prove that they followed some process like EN50128. Source code is not required. I don't think there are competent people available for auditing source code.
- gregknicholson 8y agoI agree. I just don't think we should collectively allow companies to hide their source code and still be considered trustworthy. — especially for innovative safety algorithms that could save the lives of their competitors' customers, if only the code was reusable. Competent auditors will emerge if there's demand. There were once no competent astronauts!
- yellowapple 8y ago"I don't think there are competent people available for auditing source code." Probably not, but by requiring companies to disclose source code on request, effective independent audit of that code is merely improbable versus effectively impossible.