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> With open source you can always hire some programmers to fix bugs. That might work for changing the text on a web site running Drupal 6 ten years later, but
by dom0 9y ago
> With open source you can always hire some programmers to fix bugs.
That might work for changing the text on a web site running Drupal 6 ten years later, but thinking that this sentence makes any sense when you're talking about a huge distributed system ported from probably some commercial Unix-like or even bare-metal Ada or whatever to NT then that's just a very naive sentiment.
- adrianN 9y agoIt's expensive, sure, but it's at least possible.
- maxxxxx 9y agoPossible maybe, but highly unrealistic.
- kijin 9y agoSpeaking of which, a commercial Unix might actually be the best choice for these kinds of systems. The Royal Navy has the budget and bargaining power to sign a multi-decade support contract from the likes of IBM, HP, and Oracle. The latter already offers 24 years of support for the latest series of Solaris; maybe they can add another dozen years on top of that if you throw enough money in their general direction. By contrast, no version of Windows has been supported for more than 13 years (though they might also offer special long-term contracts), and most flavors of Linux only get 5-10 years.