Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnewsc!lgm
From: lgm@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (lawrence.g.mayka)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: C Community's Cavalier Attitude On Software Reliability
Keywords: You Get What You Pay For
Message-ID: <14015@cbnewsc.ATT.COM>
Date: 1 Mar 90 04:14:51 GMT
References: <60@newave.UUCP>
Reply-To: lgm@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (lawrence.g.mayka,ihp,)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 31

In article <60@newave.UUCP> john@newave.mn.org (John A. Weeks III) writes:
>The big issue is economics.  You can have the current nationwide
>network for X dollars, or a "totally secure" network for many times
>more than X.  Please think about three facts:

One might hypothesize that better, perhaps radically different,
technologies and methods would make possible the construction of
large software systems - such as those in defense and
telecommunications - that are *simultaneously* more robust, much
more flexible, and much less expensive to build.  But would
conservative customers such as the Department of Defense and the
Bell operating companies be willing to purchase such "unorthodox"
systems?  And are conservative vendors such as General Dynamics
and AT&T willing to make the large investments such new
technologies and methods might require, simply on the *hope* that
customer skittishness can be overcome?  Remember also that any new
technology or method faces vehement opposition: foremost from all
those who personally benefit from the current practice,
secondarily from those who are emotionally attached to the current
practice, and tertiarily (!) from those who simply have no genuine
desire to learn anything new.  Industries with a vigorous free
market have learned to overcome this inertia; but defense and
telecommunications are oligopolies (only a handful of full-scale
vendors) and nearly monopsonies (a single buyer), and so have not.


	Lawrence G. Mayka
	AT&T Bell Laboratories
	lgm@ihlpf.att.com

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