International Workshop on Software Reuse and Safety

A number of researchers and practitioners believe that the appropriate way to view safety is in terms of reliability.

The field of hardware reliability is large and mature. For example, see this online reliability calculator.

The field of software reliability is also large, although considerably less mature. It has the advantage that reliability techniques may credibly be applied at the component level. But it has the disadvantage that software reliability remains a controversial concept.

Frakes and Tortorella have written a paper discussing the issue of whether software reuse can improve reliability.

Tortorella has argued in a paper in the RESAFE 2006 workshop  that reliability is the best way to view safety and reuse.