Software Safety Assessment and Probabilities

In a context where software is more and more pervasive in all systems, and where it is sometimes advocated that software complexity and size seem to provide some relevance to a probabilistic view of software behaviour, several initiatives suggest to change the way to address software in the global system safety assessment. The authors argue that whereas there are many links between safety assessment and probabilities, both at global level and for what concern random causes of failures, there are many reasons why this is not easily applicable to systematic causes in general and software in particular.