Dependability: Basic Concepts and Terminology

This document is aimed at giving informal but precise definitions characterizing the various attributes of computing systems dependability. It is a contribution to the work undertaken within the “Reliable and Fault Tolerant Computing” scientific and technical community [Avi 67, Jes 77, Mel 77, Avi 78, Ran 78, Car 79, And 81, FTC 82, Sie 82, Cri 85a, Lap 85, Avi 86, Lap 89] in order to propose clear and widely acceptable definitions for some basic concepts.