Génie logiciel, recherche, droit et société

Je reçois ce jour ce courriel d'une collègue de
Grenoble, courriel qui illustre parfaitement
ce que j'ai enseigné hier matin (aux quelques
étudiants présents dont deux qui dormaient et
que j'ai dû réveiller. Etant secouriste du travail,
si l'un deux était mort par exemple d'un arrêt
cardiaque, j'aurais pu être poursuivi ...
Voila sans doute pourquoi, je suis le seul SST
dans mon établissement !)

Formal methods and software liability:
New synergy, new challenges


PhD and Postdoc positions
VERIMAG - INRIA Grenoble, France



Context :

A strong research effort has been
 devoted by the computer science
community to the definition of new
 methods and tools to improve software
quality and reduce software risks.
 Unfortunately one can hardly say 
that, except for critical software,
 these results have so far had a 
broad impact on industrial software
 development practices. One of the
reasons for this disappointing
situation is that industrial actors do
not have enough economical incentives
 to adopt these techniques. So far, 
software providers have succeeded 
in limiting their legal liability for 
damages caused by their products
 (whether due to malfunctioning or
security attacks). But, as observed
 by several authors, software quality 
and patterns of security frauds are
 directly related to legal liability 
patterns. The usual argument to
justify this lack of liability is that
software products are too complex
 objects which can be used in
unexpected ways and whose functionalities
 (and potential malfunctioning)
cannot be characterized precisely.
Taking up this challenge is precisely
the objective of the LISE (Liability
 Issues in Software Engineering)
project: this multidisciplinary project
 will study liability issues both 
from the legal and technical points
 of views with the aim to put forward
methods to (1) define liability in a
 precise and unambiguous way and (2)
to establish such liability in case
 of incident.

Objectives :

The main results expected from the
 doctoral and postdoctoral positions
are as follows:
- Framework for the formal specification
 of liabilities in software
systems: the framework will include
 the specification of the expected
behaviour of individual components
 as well as assumptions about their
environment and a liability relation
 associating commitments with
identified agents.
- Technique for the analysis of high
 level execution traces to establish
liabilities based on the formal specification.
- Completeness and correctness proofs
of the high level analyser.
- Refinement of the high level analyser
 to derive an effective audit
analysis tool (log file analyser).
- Application of the framework to
a case study in collaboration with the
LISE partners.
The positions are proposed at different
 levels (PhD and Postdoc) and the
research topics will be adapted to
 fit the interests and backgrounds of
the candidates.

Required skills :

Minimal knowledge and motivation
 for formal methods in the general sense 
(formal specification, programming 
language semantics, program analysis, 
etc.). Candidates should also be
open minded and ready to take part in
new multidisciplinary initiatives.
NB: no expertise or knowledge in
 law is expected from the candidates,
the legal issues of the above topics
 being studied in partnership with
research groups in law.


Location :

Grenoble, capital of the French Alps,
 and one of the most active areas
in Europe for research in Information
 and Communication Technologies.
VERIMAG is a leading research center
 in embedded systems and the
coordinator of the European Network
 of Excellence ARTIST. VERIMAG hosts
about 80 people, including 40 PhD
 and postdoc students. INRIA is the 
French National Institute for Research
 in Computer Science and Control. 
Created in December 1992, the INRIA
 Rhône-Alpes research unit hosts
about 600 people, including about
150 researchers and the same number of
PhD students.

Questions :
PhD ça veut dire quoi ?
Avant l'INRIA, il y avait l'IRIA. Créée quand ?
Qui était président de la république ?
Dans quel cadre ?
Quel est le statut juridique de l'INRIA ?
Que veut dire postdoc ?