Automated Teller Machines

[Bill McGonigle]

On Aug 3, 2008, at 03:34, Jon 'maddog' Hall wrote:

> A bank in Brasil was using OS/2 for their OS in their ATM machines.

It's my understanding that most US-based banks which use text-based  
ATM's, or 'light-graphical' ATM's are also using OS/2.  I have no  
experience, just folks have told me that.  The 'snazzy' ones are of  
the variety where you can find amusing BSoD snapshots online.

But, to the original question, one doesn't get a local bank to switch  
to Linux for any reason - because they never selected it; they have a  
vendor which selected it.  A large bank may write their own ATM  
software, but most are 3rd-party.  So, that would be the area of  
focus, the vendors.  And I suspect the vendors are highly motivated  
to keep things as proprietary as possible.  It could be the royalty  
savings would trump that.  My guess is their bidding isn't highly  
competitive (non-commodity product) and they happily pass along  
royalty costs.

Now... if there was an open spec, an open source implementation, and  
COTS hardware such that a local bank could 'just' build an ATM.   
Well, best ask a banking IT guy how that might shape up, but at least  
it would have some chance of happening that's > 0.  If one were  
interested in working on such a project, finding a local bank owner  
who's well-fed-up with 'both' (for lack of knowledge other than what  
I see locally) of the ATM vendors might be a place to start.  Selling  
ready-to-go packages for much less than the proprietary guys might be  
a business model.

-Bill

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