On Thu, Nov 15, 2001 at 11:44:55PM +0800, CYWare wrote: > Yup, just this year in the US, Home Depot deployed their Linux POS solution > to 20,000 units nationwide. Another major retailer there did the same > thing. When you start talking about 20,000 units, then the licensing costs > become substantial. Can you imagine how much it would cost to license Home > Depot's operation (clients and servers)?
And, yet, people still do stuff like that as the rule, Home Depot is the exception. At the hospital where my wife has given birth, they have a computer in each room for the purpose of entering patient information, blood pressure, etc. The application is an X/Motif application running on a Unix server (probably SCO) somewhere. The machines in each room were Windows 98 machines running X-ceed (about $400-$500 per machine). They did nothing but run the X application full-screen, the rest of Windows was unused. Just on that floor, the hospital had wasted about $12,000 on useless licenses. There are many stories like that, and we just need to work all the harder to change it. Michael -- Michael Darrin Chaney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.michaelchaney.com/ _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
