On Saturday, November 17, 2012 11:27:08 PM UTC-8, Roel Baardman wrote:
Its amazing how some folks feel its necessary to attack a company that has

done, and continues to do, a huge service to the worldwide glider community.

I sincerely hope you and everybody else, including Flarm, get that these requests are made in (what we think is) the best interest of safety. I like Flarm, but I see some room for improvement. So in

the end, I would like to see if I can make Flarm get even better. I am sincerely worried about what happens when multiple pilots crash in the USA.

Back to the scaremongering again. Why don't you worry about the Netherlands and let USA pilots worry about what happens here. Flarm is just not a great SAR tool and never will be, its a maybe useful thing is some situations, there are many better/more general tools, and many of those (especially SPOT) are widely used in sailplanes the USA. And as I said before should there ever be a need to analyze a PowerFLARM log in an an urgent SAR situation I expect through the many contacts we have in the USA we'll be able to get access to key Flarm technical and management staff in the USA and Europe within a very quick time.

Also, perhaps I can help improve the format, thus giving the Flarm team time to work on features which are beyond my knowledge.


Also, I feel I'm not asking much. I think I've figured out the LFLA format a bit, but I would need some small details to decode it. Raw code, from for example tiny snippets of flarm firmware or the

php range checker on their website would be more than sufficient I think. This sounds like 5 minutes of work to me.

You don't have a God given right to demand anything from Flarm or any other company. If you want something from them deal with them in private. Getting on a public forum and ****ing on and on about Flarm is not the way to do it. Dragging this out in public shows a high level of immaturity, and based on that alone if I was at Flarm I'd be strongly disinclined to ever give you access to confidential/private data. If you think you can improve technical things, have ideas, then instead of acting like you have a God-given right of access, discuss your ideas with Flarm technical/management staff and sell them on why they should work with (or hire?) you.

There are logical reasons for Flarm to not disclose everything about their technology, (as I see it, Flarm may disagree...) they don't want imitators copying it and then having to deal with compatibility issues, they don't want to have to pay staff to develop technology and have potential competitors use it for free, they don't want to have to deal with interoperability issues or be slowed down in their ability to innovate, or have to deal with all the political bull**** of having things adopted as a "standard" and then having to deal with the bureaucracy of evolving a standard, having to worry about how other implementations are verified etc., all that would likely be a huge mess and staff time and money sink.

Flarm and its partners have shipped over ten thousand devices that have likely saved many injuries and lives. Their strategy has worked so far, kept the company in business and us all supplied with collision avoidance gear, and they get to decide who they work with and how.

Using the "and what have you done for safety?" Argument is a bit odd I think, as this assumes that only (commercially?) released work matters. I, for example, have done a Msc thesis on wireless

networking between airborne gliders, also with safety in mind. Does not ever commercially releasing my work give me no right to comment on aspects of Flarm? Others have way more experience

in programming, testing and using glide computer software. Should they have shifted their focus to safety in order to critisize others? I think not, and to me it kind of sounds like an instructor is

telling a solo pilot "what do you know?".

This is getting pretty incoherent, maybe its a language issue, but I cannot work out what you are going on about. I never mentioned anything about "what have you done for saftey" and neither have I said (nor do I hold) that only commercially released software matters.


Darryl