> 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.

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jacquesm 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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'.

	▲	chii an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> 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!

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horsawlarway 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

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dullcrisp 2 hours ago | parent [-]

So flying in a plane you built yourself is in fact safer than flying commercial because the motivations line up. Got it.

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AnthonyMouse an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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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sarusso an hour ago | parent | next [-]

This example is so right. Including the parallel with what happened with those two aircrafts.

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amrocha 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Definitely not the untested code I wrote myself!

Are you kidding me? How many times have you unwillingly introduced bugs into a code base you didn’t fully understand? That’s basically table stakes for software engineering.

	▲	AnthonyMouse 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Definitely not the untested code I wrote myself! Nobody said it was untested. > How many times have you unwillingly introduced bugs into a code base you didn’t fully understand? That’s basically table stakes for software engineering. Which applies just the same to the people the company hired to do it, and now we're back to "the people with a stronger incentive to get it right are the people who die if it goes wrong".

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mindslight an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

	▲	amrocha 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You can’t honestly believe that or you wouldn’t be able to function in society.