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Development of the Skycar System

I believe that the Skycar system can be developed around the world using the internet.

Such a development would be similar to Linux, but would pay the developers. It would also pay individuals/groups who discover errors.

I believe that Moller International in early 2000 will partner with some large, probably Asian, company so as to produce Skycars.

It will be an Asian company because
1) they have a much worse traffic problem than the US.
2) their aviation authorities are more likely to accept different software production methods.

Brief Skycar summary which you can copy from

Question 1: What SW development system is best?

What software development systems could be considered? It must be able to produce a VERY reliable system. See Skycar Redundancy for details. It must eventually support requirements generation, code generation in probably Ada and C++, and simulation.

Question 2: What can we learn from Linux?

What can we learn from Linux development: interactions, rewards, what to do about missed deadlines, multiple developers for the same function, people cross-checking the requirements as well as the end product

Software can be developed over the internet

Operating System: Linux?

Linux is a candidate operating system both for the development and flight environments. It appears that Linux has been adapted by NASA for space applications which require the same extreme reliability as the Skycar needs. Apparently only some of the Linux source code needed to be modified to achieve the needed reliability. It is of course desirable to have the same operating system for development, air coordination, and on-board the Skycar.

Open Source Software on internet - provided by R. Britten

The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Musings on Linux and open source by an accidental revolutionary
Eric S. Raymond October 1999 his web site is at www.tuxedo.org/~esr
Reviewed by Henry Lahore Dec 1999

"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" pg 27.
The author’s conclusion having seen that when there are 1,000’s of debuggers, that at least one will have an elegant, simple solution to a software bug. Stated again on pg 41.

Decentralized debugging
"Debugging is parallelizable – not much coordination is needed between debuggers. Pg 43

More users find more bugs because more users adds more different ways of stressing the program. The effect is amplified when the users are co-developers. Pg 43

"..decentralized peer review trumps all the conventional methods for trying to ensure that details don’t get slipped" pg 73

Why did the people support Linux?
Linus kept his hacker/users constantly stimulated and rewarded – stimulated by the prospect of having an ego-satisfying piece of the action, and rewarded by the sight of constant (even daily) improvement in their work. Pg 40

Open-source programmers are very productive
They do not tolerate the in-efficiency which exists in most programming organizations.

They were also self-selected: they had to be interested enough to use the software, learn how it worked, attempted to find solutions to problems, and produce reasonable fixes. Pg 42

Software is usually purchased only if the customer expects future vendor service
The author promotes the lease/rental of software, not purchase. Pg 145

Customers seeking high reliability and quality will reward open source producers
This results from (pgs 170-180)
1) having more eyeballs for development and debugging
2) Customer is not locked into a single software supplier for support, bug fixes and enhancements
- - - - the more vital the software,
- - - - - - - - - the less the customer can tolerate having it controlled by an outside party
3) Developers are able to adapt quickly to changing requirements
otherwise customer might miss opportunities

Open software developers and distributors different strengths pg 181
This tier separation creates a very fluid internal market for improvements, Developers compete with each other, for the attention of distributors and users, on the quality of their software. Distributors compete for user dollars on the appropriateness of their selection policies and on the value they can add to the software. Pg 181. No single node in the resulting internal market structure is required. Distributors are feed from the need to fund massive and ongoing software development, they can concentrate on systems integration, packaging, quality, and service. Pg 182.

Forking almost never happens pg 87

95% of software is not developed for sale pg 143

Apache also used massive peer review pg 157

Under the Radar
How Red Hat changed the software business and took Microsoft by surprise
Robert Young CEO of Red Hat 1999

In the cathedral/feudal system software is developed by small teams of engineers who maintain control over the users of their products by keeping tight control over the technology pg xiv

The Linux software development team was in fact bigger than anything even Microsoft could afford. Pg 12

last updated Dec 28, 1999