Could you say more about how these accidents were due to software issues stemming from outsourcing of development? Could you say more about how not outsourcing COULD have prevented the (2) accidents?
This is not what I understood to have happened.
The software developers writing the code 100% did not come up with or spec out how the MCAS should work. They're not aeronautical engineers, and they absolutely were not in the "system engineering" decision making change of the control system and how it should interface. They didn't decide to rely on one angle of attack sensor.
I know people like to shit on Boeing for outsourcing, but for FFS what do you think non-outsourced software developers were going to do? Fix the spec? Design it "right?" It WAS designed right to spec. The SPEC was bad.
"NO Billy, this is a bad control scheme. This is going to get people killed when the system forces action with 1oo1 voting on a key critical instrument. Especially when the methods and need to override such behavior is obfuscated from the pilot."
Non outsourced developers would have implemented it exactly as outsourced developers did because this is what they were TOLD to do. They didn't get to make ANY of those decisions. It would have still killed people.
Interestingly, my understanding is that Boeing maintains NONE of the production MCAS software was "outsourced" or written by "offshored" devs and was "effed up" in the good old US of A.
The software worked EXACTLY as intended. The system design was bad. The software developers did not do an iota of this system design.
<https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1iuv5df/company_moving_to_only_prompting_no_coding/me2kt9m/>
very respectfully,
kushal