Frederick Pothon of ACG Solutions has recently published a document entitled - Dissimilar tools: Use cases and impact on tool qualification level on the open-DO blog.

The Open DO initiative has several key goals including: decreasing the barrier of entry for the development of safety-critical software, encouraging research in the area of safety-critical software development, and increasing the availability of educational materials for the development of safety-critical software in particular for academics and students.

The document evaluates the lack of existing qualifiable COTS tools and poses the question, "whether two separately developed and thus dissimilar tools that satisfy the same operational requirements may be used instead of a single tool, either to avoid the need for qualifying that tool or to serve as an alternative method for tool qualification."

The document was created in collaboration with ACG Solutions and AdaCore with additional contributions and reviews from Jean-Charles Dalbin of Airbus and Ben Brosgol.