Re: Solaris: The Most Advanced OS?
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.
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