Rules of computer art 1988
So we do agree about the passage of more than 50 FT RA to the unexpected less than 30 FT RA before the runway threshold.
Being particularly concerned in flying systems as a former manager of mathematics and computational methods, the comment of the expert Max Venet indicates to me a lack of computational methods. From memory, he said the following sentence: "We do not really know why the aircraft did not set in flare passing below thirty FT RA, or how long he should stay less than thirty feet. "
This sentence shows that Venet did not found in Airbus a person who could tell him that or a document with this information. He could not access either to a history of the evolution of the software before its certification, and he did not find the information in the certification documents.
I believe that these serious gaps do not correspond to the state of the art computer at that time (or today!). If indeed at that time certain documents required to decode a specific 0 and 1 know-how it was even more to accompany these documents and comments in everyday language. In any case it is so that AS or AB (or any other designer of the system) should proceed.
The absence of such documents can only be accompanied by operational documents being incomplete and unsafe to the user (airlines, pilots, mechanics).
I say that as a computer specialist who had to put up this kind of working methods among researchers and engineers. And it had nothing difficult, but it is of course a constraint.
I do not see the point either to keep secret the software description. The fight against the copy is much easier to exercise if everyone puts their workon the table in daylight in a reasonable time. Only that can serve as engineers who wish to sell their know-how and pilots who wish to return alive from flight when they flew as we taught them