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

The matter with FLARM may have discussed "to death" but a few appear th have grasped the basics, so let me try to wrap it up once for ever: FLARM decided one day to make business in flight safety by manufacturing an air trafic alert device, a Version for glider pilots of a TCAS in fact. Fair enough. The device has soon spread throughout the glider pilots community and by doing so it has changed the pilot's behaviour in flight. As soon as other manufacturers showed up FLARM introduced the data encryption in the firmware of a TCAS system making the other systems invisible to them and viceversa. This modus operandi is unthinkable in the GA and commercial aviation and thanks God. We all get on planes to fly for business or leisure without realling worrying about mid air collisions in a much denser airtraffic environment. This thanks to the fact that the standards are set by an authority, the FAA generally, and not by the whim of the largest or most cunning manufacturer. The fact that the soaring world is not as heavily regulated as the general and commercial aviation by no means mean that FLARM is entitled to act as it does since 2008. The protocol transmission has to be public and I for God's sake still want to have the right to chose the system that i like the most for my glider!
Marco Maceri

Tim,
I'm not. I am a DSX user and my behavior would be the same even if I had a Flarm.
I want to fly safely and I'm in favor of open market.

I like to fly in France in summer and as a matter of fact they are requesting me to throw away my DSX and install a Flarm. Do you think this is fair?


Are you connected with DSX?

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
a=
protocol, taking in consideration the privacy issue.=20

Exactly like the IGC file format for the loggers. Nobody contests th
fact
=
that every pilot that does competitions or records must have a certified
lo=
gger. In a similar way every pilot in competition should have an
anti-colli=
sion. It should not be obliged to buy a single brand like if we were in
the=
Soviet Union

You are not.

EDIATec, LXNAV and LX Navigation all make a variety of instruments wit
integrated Flarm. You have a choice.

As you are probably aware, DSX took this question to IGC many years ag
without the result they wished for.

Are you connected with DSX?



Is there a report available on that IGC discussion?

Thanks,
Shaun

By the way, there are more than 500 glider pilots out there that are supporting us.
And we wish to thank them all for signing and the people that, reading this conversation, will sign the petition!
THANKS

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

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

At 11:35 22 May 2015, wrote:
Hasn't this argument been done to death already? Flarm get to protect
the=
ir intellectual property rights and gliders pilots get mutual
interoperabil=
ity between glider to glider collision warning units. Third party
hardware=
makers get to include and sell Flarm capability in their own
instruments.
=
Geeks get to complain about monopoly and conspiracy. Everyone's a
winner.


Not really. Flarm protects their revenue by keeping their protocol closed.
Do you claim that a protocol can be pattented?

Monopoly makes things stagnant and more expensive. DSX provided better
device, for better price. Being CEO of a company you want keep competition
away, but being a consumer I don't understand why you want just one
product? What's more supporting just closed source you force others to buy
just this one only product.

Interoperability is not an issue, as long as protocol is known what DSX has
already shown.

There is no conspiracy in it. Monopoly is a simple fact.
Regards
Wolf
http://youtu.be/aQUB7erVIKw

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