Comment by bitmasher9
18 hours ago
> it's the equivalent of flying a plane you built yourself
A great analogy because people die that way. I personally would never push code to another person’s insulin pump (or advertise code as being used for an insulin pump) because I couldn’t live with the guilt if my bug got someone else killed.
I know people die that way (GA). But someone is working for the companies that make insulin pumps and they are not as a rule equally motivated so I would expect them to do worse, not better.
And to the best of my knowledge none of the closed-loop people have died as a result of their work and they are very good at peer reviewing each others work to make sure it stays that way. And I'd trust my life to open source in such a setting long before I'd do it to closed source. At least I'd have a chance to see what the quality of the code is, which in the embedded space ranges from 'wow' all the way to 'no way they did that'.
> I would expect them to do worse, not better.
which is why lots of systems and processes (sometimes called red tape) exist to try and prevent the undesired outcome, and dont rely on the competency of a single person as the weak link!
There are more financial reasons to violate and cheat the red tape than there are incompetent open source hackers in the world.
Anytime anybody does something himself, there is a risk. People die because of welding parts cleaned with break-cleaner, people die driving, diving, sky-diving, doing bungee jumping...
Advertising that code, IMHO would be as showing of you doing extreme sports, for example. I do not think is any bad. A good disclaimer should be enough to take away any guilt.
I'm not aware of any deaths attributed to open source artificial pancreas systems. Meanwhile there have been multiple attributed to closed source glucose monitors.
And yet someone IS pushing code to these devices. Every single one.
So the question really becomes - Are these people working on their own pumps with open source more or less invested than the random programmers hired by a company that pretty clearly can't get details right around licensing, and is operating with a profit motive?
More reckless as well? Perhaps. But at least motivated by the correct incentives.
So flying in a plane you built yourself is in fact safer than flying commercial because the motivations line up. Got it.
You, an engineer at a major aircraft manufacturer that isn't Boeing, have been working after hours with some of your colleagues on a hobby project to add some modern safety features to an older model of small private plane, because you regard it as unsafe even though it still has a government certification and you got into this field because you want to save lives.
Your "prototype" is a plane from the original manufacturer with no physical modifications but a software patch to use data from sensors the plane already had to prevent the computer from getting confused under high wind conditions in a way that has already caused two fatal crashes.
Now you have to fly somewhere and your options for a plane are the one with the history of fatal crashes or the same one with your modifications, and it's windy today. Which plane are you getting on?
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Those people on the boeing flights would have appreciated a little more of the correct motivations.
Instead they got McDonnell Douglas'd
As it turns out the motivations matter way more than you might think.
Flying in a plane you built yourself is likely safer than flying in the same model of plane built by a company that assembled it for you using lowest-bid labor while making you sign a twenty page lawyer barf disclaiming liability.
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