CH> In all honesty, I still don't have the courage to implement
 CH> a freeware Linux system in many places that I could
 CH> effectively replace other "commercial" network servers, very
 CH> much including Novell. That is another discussion, but if
 CH> one looks 2, 5 or 10 years down the road and at the *huge*
 CH> progress public domain *nix operating systems have made
 CH> these past 3 years, it really staggers the imagination.
 CH> Wouldn't there be tremendous advantage to using an
 CH> integrated multiuser system whose source code was public
 CH> domain and could be implemented on most any platform? Makes
 CH> you wonder just what and how many "commercial" operating
 CH> systems are going to be around after the milennium turns.
 MB> We've used Linux in a number of commerical situations.  We use it in-
 MB> house very heavily, we use it at our co-located Internet server, and we 
 MB> have used it as a file server in a number of 
 MB> installations where the situation accorded with that 
 MB> decision.  In particular, we do a volunteer maintenance 
 MB> job for a Catholic high school, which obviously doesn't 
 MB> have much money, and two things dictated our choice of 
 MB> Linux: the workstations already had ARCnet cards, which 
 MB> would have cost at least $20 each to replace with 
 MB> Ethernet cards, and we didn't want to have to pay per-
 MB> user licensing if it could be avoided.
Linux is really getting used extensively and developed and well debugged 
(it's quite stable) because of the internet Mike.  It's hard to imagine where 
it will all be in 2, 5 or 10 years, but I find a public domain operating 
system like linux quite thought provoking. Look back at what it was 3 years, 
2 years and 1 year ago and then look at the development, support and 
capabilities now. 
It would seem to me that software application developers and perhaps 
companies like Sun and maybe DEC, would be the ones that have the most to 
gain from supporting a public domain, source code available multiuser 
operating system. Nothing propropriatry could be built into it that might 
give the operating system developer who also markets desktop apps like MS or 
IBM a competetive advantage in the development sales and marketing of thier 
destop applications. 
Anyway I find the progress and support Linux has made this past year or two 
simply amazing. Certainly the concept and implementation of a good free souce 
code public domain OS is good. If not now, then certianly in the near future. 
Some day we gotta give up on 32 bit operating systems that are designed to be 
backwards compatible and waste a huge amount of thier resources attempting to 
remain 100% backwards compatible with 18 year old programming technology and 
practices some time soon . Maybe a free public domain operating 
system supported by application developers is the way to get that change to 
finally happen.
Note that only on the last line of this discourse do you see the word 
"Novell" or "Windows NT" mentioned, and they are only mentioned so's you will 
take note (you didn't convince me, but you did wear me out).
--- Maximus/NT 3.01b1
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