Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
different national homologation procedures and a diversity of operational
rules to be covered, combined with interfacing to several legacy systems dur-
ing a lengthy transitional period has to be considered as a major cost driver.
Therefore, even compared with some of the more sophisticated legacy ATP
and ATC systems in Europe ETCS has turned out to be far more expensive
without providing much if any additional performance or safety advantages.
Due to ambiguities in the system requirement specification (SRS) various
deviations have been revealed in several projects, so that even the ultimate
goal of full interoperability has not yet been accomplished. Therefore the de-
velopment of ETCS has to be considered as “work in progress”, resulting
in many software upgrades to be expected in the near and distant future.
Since almost all products on the market are based on proprietary software,
this means a low degree of standardization for the most complex component
as well as life-long dependency to the original equipment manufacturers with
high cost of ownership for vehicle holders and operators.
Therefore an open source approach has been suggested, not only covering
the embedded control software of the ETCS onboard unit itself, but including
all tools and documents in order to make the whole product life cycle as
transparent as possible optimizing economy, reliability, safety and security
alike. This concept is called “open proof” a new approach for the railway
signaling sector.
A dual licensing concept is suggested, based on the European Union Pub-
lic License with a “copy left” provision on the one hand, combined with a
non-copy left “for-fee-license” on the other hand to provide a cost sharing
effect for participating suppliers and service providers. By offering a trusted
repository, a dedicated sources code access policy in combination with a re-
lease schedule policy, economical as well as safety and security considerations
can be taken into account.
A two step approach, providing a formally specified non-vital reference
system and a procurement program, asking for converting existing commer-
cial products from closed source into open source, and later merging those
two approaches, is expected to enhance quality and safety parameters in the
long run. A neutral independent and mainly not-for-profit organization is
suggested to man-age the project involving all major stake holders to define
the future product strategy.
The whole openETCS project has to be considered as a business con-
version project from a purely competitive sales oriented market into a “co-
competitive” service market, enhancing cooperation on standards by enabling
competition on implementation and services.
It is well understood that such a change cannot be accomplished even
by one of the largest railway operators alone. Therefore several EU railway
organizations, as there are: ATOC (UK), DB (D), NS (NL), SNCF (F) and
Trenitalia (I) have already signed a Memorandum of Understanding promot-
ing the openETCS concept in the framework of an international project.
