On Tue, 2011-01-25 at 14:25 -0800, Benjamin Smith wrote: > On Tuesday, January 25, 2011 11:20:34 am Always Learning wrote: > > Then one day a big bad wolf called Oracle of very expensive Oracle SQL > > fame swallowed Red Hat, like they swallowed MySQL, Solaris, Open Office > > and Visual Box. The long term future for these is uncertain. > > Whaaa...? Facts would seem otherwise.... Here's an article from just a few > months ago! > > http://www.glgroup.com/News/Oracle-to-Red-Hat--Its-Not-Your-Fathers-Linux- > Market-Anymore-51058.html Thank you. Happily I got the 'swallowed Red Hat' wrong. Sadly the long term future for Red Hat, MySQL, Open Office and Visual Box is certainly uncertain. I've seen the changes in the computer world first-hand for 43 years staring when there were no screens, no keyboards and no disks although one installation, a KDF9, did have a magnetic drum. Everything changes. Computer companies and software change, evolve and then eventually disappear. It's 'computer evolution'. What is noticeable is the vast number of organisations failing to use computers properly - not extracting the maximum benefit from their computer systems and running incompatible systems which can not exchange basic data. In the UK in 2011 A.D. local authorities (councils) and the territorial police forces operate this way. Despite vast computer budgets, and a supporting bureaucracy which includes computer managers lacking any of the skills possessed by participants on this mailing list, important decisions appear to be made by morons usually assisted by consultants whose shinny shoes and expensive suits are much more conspicuous than technical acumen. Gone are the days when an in-house team of programmers and analysts would design and code customised programmes that fully satisfied the business needs of the organisations. The intelligence services and scientific research are exceptions. In the commercial sphere it is M$ and Oracle applications (especially Oracle Financials) plus proprietary software from third parties. The number of 'computer experts' that know only how to press the correct key in a M$ application yet lack any appreciation of how computer systems work or the logic behind them is increasing. Linux, the BSDs and Solaris continue the good tradition of 'real' computing while expensive Apple demonstrates how good Windoze could be if M$ really tried. Will we one day be dependent on open source Chinese Linux if Western open source Linux dries-up ? -- With best regards, Paul. England, EU.