On 11/8/05, Andy Streich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Monday 07 November 2005 05:28 am, Tshepang Lekhonkhobe wrote: > > > I doubt many people on this list have much experience working in > > > high-volume, financial transaction environments where minutes of downtime > > > correspond to millions of dollars lost. It's not reasonable IMO to > > > expect OSS to serve that market -- yet. > > > > Sounds like you are underrating FLOSS... Isn't Google using the Linux > > kernel. Or rather aren't you saying that the corporates haven't opened > > their eyes yet. > > Saying that FLOSS has not yet solved all problems in all areas is not > underrating it. Sure Google uses GNU/Linux but what is the cost to Google or > its users if one of their servers faults? There are several areas FLOSS has > not begun to penetrate all of which have hard realtime constraints where lots > of money and/or lives are on the line: military, industrial control, finance > and medicine come quickly to mind. > > FLOSS can only enter those areas when there is a seachange in how the world > economy functions. I think there are many interesting questions about when > and how that kind of change might occur. Debain GNU/Linux is a big part of > the equation but no more so than OpenOffice. I know user apps are not seen > as very exciting to OS gurus but OpenOffice is affecting the economics of > software as much as GNU/Linux itself.
I don't know the accuracy of these statements, but they look somewhat legitimate... and yeah, the example of Google wasn't the best, as you just made me realise. Thanks...
