HIS'15 website tells us "Our lives increasingly depend on the correct functioning of software". But whilst true in itself, software is just one of the links in a system-chain; each needing to be as strong as the others for a satisfactory outcome. History may have branded software as the weakest link, but can that be said today? A system is an entity complete in its context; and judged subjectively by its black-box behaviour. And when faced with its failure it isn't acceptable to claim that "my bit worked"!

Investigations into potential causes of Unintended Acceleration (UA) for Toyota vehicles have made news several times in the past few years. Some blame has been placed on floor mats and sticky throttle pedals. But a jury trial verdict found that defects in Toyota's Electronic Throttle Control System software and safety architecture caused a fatal mishap. This talk will outline key events in the still-ongoing Toyota UA story and pull together the technical issues that have been discovered by NASA and other experts.

Open source has gone from being the domain of academic researchers to the forefront of enterprise development and deployment. All of the most significant industrial waves of the past two decades have had open source at their heart, whether it's Linux for the operating system, Android for mobile or JBoss and Tomcat for application servers. In this talk we'll discuss why open source has been adopted within enterprises for mission critical environments and what reliability and dependability challenges it has faced as a result. We'll also look at the impact open source is having on things such as Internet of Things.