DECnet and other dead technologies (was: Linux for "cloud computing")

[Jon 'maddog' Hall]

>On 03/07/2010 11:01 AM, Jon 'maddog' Hall wrote:
>> o every hardware support contract received a letter
>> o every software support contract received a letter

>There are real advantages to knowing who is using your software.

Well, this was not "knowing who was using your software".  It was
"knowing who was on software contract". :-)

There may have been hundreds more still using the software and hardware,
but they were "off contract" and therefore got no warning when they
bought the software the next time and there was no support for that
particular widget.

BTW, I participated in Bob Young's (Red Hat's first President) early
statistical figuring of how many users of Linux there were, and even in
those days we had ranges of orders of magnitude in reliability of the
numbers.  Bob simply stated the way he came to the numbers and let the
reader believe his analysis or not.

In any statistical analysis there is the answer, then the statistical
range and deviations, then the probability that the answer and
statistical range and deviations are accurate, which you can believe or
not believe. :-)

md