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High Assurance and FLOSS
Sometimes software has be "high assurance" to meet safety or security requirements (say, if it's controlling an airplane). This is software where you can convince skeptical parties that the software will always or never perform certain key functions, without fail -- in other words, that there are absolutely no software defects that would interfere with the software’s key functions. A new paper discusses some relationships between high assurance software (for security or safety) and free-libre / open source software (FLOSS). In particular, it shows that many tools for developing high assurance software are FLOSS by examining the areas of software configuration management, testing, formal methods, analysis implementation, and code generation. However, while high assurance components are rare, FLOSS high assurance components are even rarer. This is in contrast to medium assurance, where there are a vast number of FLOSS tools and FLOSS components, and the security record of FLOSS components is quite impressive. The paper then examines why this is the circumstance. The most likely reason for this appears to be that decision-makers for high assurance components are not even considering the possibility of FLOSS-based approaches. The paper concludes that in the future, those who need high assurance components should consider FLOSS-based approaches as a possible strategy. High Assurance (for Security or Safety) and Free-Libre / Open Source Software (FLOSS) |
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Comments (11)
Your comments on mathematicians publishing their work for peer review corrections is what spurred me to go ahead and post the typos here. It's not like it's some short-lived blog note to be tossed in a few days. :)
You are wasted on grammar and typos.
Reading these exchanges makes clear to me that you are meant to serve a more important role, a pivotal role, perhaps, in the future direction of FLOSS.
You sir, will be wasting your time on trivialities until you come up with an appropriate phrase whose acronym is TEETH.
Free Libre Open Source Software
Yields Open Unrivaled Reviewable
Technological Excellence Evolving Through Humaneness.
Gimme my gold star.
A follow-up, no doubt induced by sleep deprivation and straining my feeble mind over problems associated with building a rough-hewn gazebo from cedar saplings --
FLOSS gets the corrupting stuff out!
FLOSS is YOUR software.
The TEETH of the FLOSS community is the ethical treatment of users and developers, which results in the software evolving as many people chew on the code and share the fruits of their labors.
Now I want 2 gold stars and a speckled pup. Or at least another Spinlikeatop tale.
I stand humbled.
Well, maybe not humbled -- but as close as I ever get...
Gold stars and pup are in the mail.
"Are you lost?", I ask, innocently, since only the mail carriers routinely find their way this far out and back to civilization again without assistance.
A primordial growl and grunt squeezes out from between a well-chewed chunk of what used to be a cigar and the remains of a nose that is apparently unconcerned about plowing through obstacles. The rumble seems to translate to, "Dino sent me."
"Dino?"
"Yeah. I got a package for ya. You owes me shipping."
"But I didn't order anything, and the only 'Dino' I know of is not into shipping."
"Youse want ta pay da shipping quiet like, or ya want I should re-particulate yer kneecaps."
Jus so you'll know, Louie the Hammer did not get his nick by listening to old M.C. Hammer tracks. When he shouts "Hammer time" you will truly appreciate the meaning of particulated kneecaps.
I suggest ya pays da man, or da gimp will not be a reference to graphics.
dinotrac:
I think maybe I was a little loose with the specs on the speckled pup. You could've at least house-trained him. He seems to think my new leg brace is a fire hydrant.
The pup was trained. Oh yeah, the pup was well-trained.
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Am I just being dense or should that "are FLOSS" be something else?
[edited to add:]
Look near the end of the section titled "Formal methods: Specification and proof tools":
"For the latter, they generally they use a general-purpose programming language (such as ML) where the theorem proving “tactics” are written."
One of those "they"s is extra.
[2nd edit:]
More typos. Under "Why are high assurance FLOSS components so rare?":
2nd paragraph: "Jeffrey S. Norris and Poul-Henning Kamp’s “Mission-Critical Development with Open Source Software: Lessons Learned” (IEEE Software) clearly shows that people do develop mission-critical systems at for NASA using FLOSS components; they relied heavily on FLOSS components, reporting that they kept the project within budget and resulted in a more robust and flexible tool."
Something wrong with "systems at for NASA".
7th paragraph:
"It’s even more more bizarre when you compare software proofs with the way normal mathematical proofs are made."
More "more"s than needed. :)
"And for good reason; it turns out that many formally published are discovered to have flaws, and must later be corrected or withdrawn. "
Something wrong with "formally published are".
"If those who dedicate their lives to mathematics often make mistakes, it’s only reasonable to suspect that software developers that hide their code and proofs from others are also likely to get it wrong."
Ok, this is a grammar question, I think. Shouldn't "software developers that" be "software developers who"?