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.

▲

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.

▲

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?

▲

sarusso an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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

▲

amrocha 41 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 32 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".

▲

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