Help us with this petition for security on anti-collision systems

At 13:46 22 May 2015, Tim Newport-Peace wrote:
At 13:14 22 May 2015, wrote:
In any case I think that an important organization like IGC should
define

Well said Wolf. It's not a win-win situation. Simply said Flarm uses its dominant position to try to make more money. Business decision. What is wrong is that someone ask to have Flarm on board. They should ask an anti collision system based on a protocol certified by a third party (IGC???)

Flarm currently does not have to ensure compatibility to its legacy code (due to mandatory updates), let alone having to respect a protocol or the ideas of other vendors. In my opinion this flexibility is one of the reasons Flarm was able to evolve so well.

Opening the protocol would mean that all stakeholders would need to agree on any change to the protocol. New ideas would need to be formally filed, debated, different interests negotiated, compromises would need to be found before a small change finally can be implemented and rolled out. Unfortunately democratic processes are not very efficient. Looking at the ADS-B discussion in another thread shows how difficult and time consuming it can be to establish a new standard.

On Friday, May 22, 2015 at 9:33:48 PM UTC+1, wrote:
"Well said Wolf. It's not a win-win situation. Simply said Flarm uses its dominant position to try to make more money. Business decision. What is wrong is that someone ask to have Flarm on board. They should ask an anti collision system based on a protocol certified by a third party (IGC???)"

That would be fair enough - if (and its a big if) the IGC had established both a communication protocol and (crucially) a collision prediction algorithm tailored for gliders that they were prepared to continually develop and update - then it would have been perfectly logical for those to be made open to all developers. That is a route that could have been taken but it is extremely unlikely that a body such as the IGC could have had the idea, the means and the will to have done so. In the real world it was done commercially and there are 25,000 Flarm units already installed and you have simply missed the boat. Many of those will be in club gliders and many others in syndicated gliders so a very conservative estimate would be 50,000+ pilots flying using Flarm at present. 500 supporting the petition is probably about 1% of the number of users. It would be very interesting to know how many of those signing the petition are actually current Flarm users.

Your petition only mentions the communication protocols. Flarm is both the communication protocol plus the collision warning algorithm. For the rest of us who have already paid for, and are using, Flarm the prospect of competing systems has no gain and increases the possibility of incompatible warning algorithms.

John Galloway

On Friday, May 22, 2015 at 9:33:48 PM UTC+1, wrote:
"Well said Wolf. It's not a win-win situation. Simply said Flarm uses its dominant position to try to make more money. Business decision. What is wrong is that someone ask to have Flarm on board. They should ask an anti collision system based on a protocol certified by a third party (IGC???)"

That would be fair enough - if (and its a big if) the IGC had established both a communication protocol and (crucially) a collision prediction algorithm tailored for gliders that they were prepared to continually develop and update - then it would have been perfectly logical for those to be made open to all developers. That is a route that could have been taken but it is extremely unlikely that a body such as the IGC could have had the idea, the means and the will to have done so. In the real world it was done commercially and there are 25,000 Flarm units already installed and you have simply missed the boat. Many of those will be in club gliders and many others in syndicated gliders so a very conservative estimate would be 50,000+ pilots flying using Flarm at present. 500 supporting the petition is probably about 1% of the number of users. It would be very interesting to know how many of those signing the petition are actually current Flarm users.

Your petition only mentions the communication protocols. Flarm is both the communication protocol plus the collision warning algorithm. For the rest of us who have already paid for, and are using, Flarm the prospect of competing systems has no gain and increases the possibility of incompatible warning algorithms.

John Galloway

Well this is an interesting point. I personally believe that the Flarm's users should also sign and the reason is easy: if they are a monopolist they can always decide to charge, as an example, a fee for using their device. If you put (always as an example) 100 EURO per year they could make 2.5 million per year on license fee. Not bad for them, not so sure for the users.....

Apparently you don't like democracy but you definitely like the Internet. CISCO has the vast majority of the router but they do not own the IP protocol. This is just to make an analogy with a market a bit bigger ....

Sergio Elia

Well this is an interesting point. I personally believe that the Flarm's users should also sign and the reason is easy: if they are a monopolist they can always decide to charge, as an example, a fee for using their device. If you put (always as an example) 100 EURO per year they could make 2.5 million per year on license fee. Not bad for them, not so sure for the users.....

Apparently Alexander doesn't like democracy on this but we all definitely like the Internet. CISCO has the vast majority of the router but they do not own the IP protocol. This is just to make an analogy with a market a bit bigger ....