This is coming from the perspective of someone who is an expert in software already, all this stuff looks like a trivial side project, right? Imagine this in d

This is coming from the perspective of someone who is an expert in software already, all this stuff looks like a trivial side project, right? Imagine this in different contexts though. Why go to IKEA for furniture when you can just build your own of higher quality in your garage shop? Or why bother going to a mechanic when you can just rebuild your car's engine yourself at home? The fact is, of these three examples the software one is actually the most unrealistic. Having someone on staff with software expertise is a hard problem, and an expensive one too. If you don't already have a group of folks with software expertise on staff then hiring for it becomes a massively difficult problem. This is why there's still so much business in the build-for-hire software biz. Most companies in the world who need software based solutions are not themselves software companies. They need to use objective measures to determine the quality of the companies they farm out these projects to as well as the software that results. Additionally, software built on commodity systems (like Windows XP) is often a better choice for these companies because it means there's a much larger group of folks they can hire if they need to make changes or perform service on the system in the future (which is inevitable). As much as a custom solution built on a microcontroller or small linux based embedded system might be technically superior, cheaper, and more robust, it might not be a sustainable solution for a given company.