[LUNI] AOL and Linux and gecko

[Martin Maney]

Remember that silly rumor about AOL buying Red Hat?  Here's a story about
what the companies really were talking about, from the "see how wrong the
rumormongers can be" department:

  http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24364.html

The talks were about RH selling support and consultation contracts to help
AOL as they replace more and more of their server infrastructure:

    Thousands of AOL servers are already 100% Linux, and more are switching
    over every day. AOL number-crunchers figure they can replace an $80,000
    box running proprietary UNIX with two $5,000 Linux boxes and get a 50%
    increase in performance in addition to the cost savings.

But wait, there's more!  Gecko is coming, perhaps in the version 8:

    The only thing that might delay -- not stop, just delay -- AOL's change
    from Explorer to a Mozilla-based browser is allowing time for some of
    AOL's largest and most important "partner sites" to do away with any
    Explorer-specific features they have been using in place of W3C
    standards.

But an AOL client for Linux still seems unlikely.  That and more is
discussed.

-- 
automation: replacing what works with something that almost works,
but which is faster and cheaper.  - attributed to Roger Needham