Analysis of the original cause of software distrust

With increasing demands of software functions, software system becomes so complex and fragile that it often performs in an unexpected way. How to guarantee the software trustworthiness in the various open running environments is a challenge in the software engineering practice and research. To explain why software is untrustworthy, this paper focuses on the process and the original cause of software distrust. With analysis of implications and relationships of software distrust, failure, defect, fault and error, the distrustable factor is proposed to denote the underlying cause of software distrust, and the software distrust chain is presented to illustrate the process of software distrust, meanwhile, a case study is exemplified the distrust chain. In addition, the dis trus table factors are identified from three aspects (i.e. technique, management and human) according to an oriental system methodology-WSR approach.