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NYSE Goes To Linux
Aligrip writes "It appears that IBM has convinced the folks at the Securities Industry Automation Corp (SIAC) to move their entire trading network to Linux as explained in this article in the Investors Business Daily. The authors predict that this deal could give Linux "a hot new beachhead with financial institutions". Cool!"
Finally, a place for hackers at banks that doesn't involve maintaining 30yr old Cobol programs!
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Maybe they can put some code in there to boost some of the Linux stocks now...
A couple of years ago, we at the Portuguese Stock Exchange, started working with Linux. I don't know if it is still used. But it was meant to do a lot of work.
------I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either.------
Nice to see that the people running the NYSE know how money works, and that linux is good value.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
By the way, this wouldn't happen to have anything to do with the semi-recent stock market crashes, reportedly due to NT? What was the final say on that stuff? Was it really NT?
My sigs always suck.
Especially since the Financial field uses alot of very custom made stuff, it is not like thay are just going to go with Access.
The hidden advantadge is that people with access to money will now have first hand experience with Linux, and this will expose any lies in the marketing spin that is out there.
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NYSE is supported by SIAC, not SAIC. SAIC is "Science Applications International Corporation".
With NYSE making this move, it's very likely that AMEX, NSCC & GSCC will eventually make this move as well, since they are all supported by SIAC.
- Former SIAC consultant
Graham says SIAC converted to Linux quickly because of the software's open, flexible nature. "We were able to port our Artmail application in about two-and-a-half days," Graham said.
I would speculate they weren't running NT before if it was that easy to port their software over. So this takes a chunk out of the proprietary Unix market, sure, but if we were to consider this a Zero Sum game, Unix loses, Linux gains, Microsoft doesn't change a thing.
Now granted, other Unix shops might now say 'Well, if the NYSE does it, we can do it too!' But the Microsoft market won't feel any pressure from this until there is a similar porting comment when coming from a Windows shop.
I guess it becomes interesting now that one of the nation's largest financial institutions is running on free software. I think this is going to make a very powerful case for open source software in both small and large businesses, and even in market places where big money is traded. It means that finally the big guys are beginning to realize that stability and reliability are more important than unstable fads and fuds. (note my pathetic pun).
Oh yes, for the sake of redundancy, I will repeat that earlier post: All your investments are belong to us!
Am I a hipster-doofus?
Science Applications International Corporation is not siac. SAIC is much spookier. You need a hairy security clearance for much of the stuff they do.
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School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
A tech industry on its knees.
Investors wiping dot-com bubble remains from their faces.
Linux IPOs failing, bankruptcies in the offing.
"The NYSE moves to Linux."
The irony is palpable.
that was NASDAQ:
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"Stock trades are one of the most sensitive, secure and important kinds of transactions that exist,? said John Patrick, vice president of Internet technology at IBM. ?This deal has removed any doubt that Linux is ready for the mainstream and that it can play a major role in electronic businesses of all kinds and sizes."
This is not something I was expecting. Wonderful news! Linux can no longer be dismissed as a 'hacker' or 'hobby' operating system. It's industrial-strength!
LUSER: "You use Linux? I read in Micosoft Press Release Daily that it's not a real operating system, it's not reliable
ME: "Yeah, well, IBM and the NYSE doesn't think so. You're fund manager trades your stocks over a linux-based network."
Where does MS go from there?
Software Wars
It pains me to say this but it probably won't matter much what OS is underneath the trading software (except for performance gains etc...) because I doubt the traders ever see the OS at all. It's great PR for linux, but like all PR wins it will probably be short lived. I wouldn't expect traders to wake up each day and say to themselves "Self, I'm using Linux at work. That's neat." It just won't happen...
As for the distribution that would be used, I doubt that matters much either...
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Will Linux be Wall Street's next killer app?
Isn't it the other way around?
IBM is playing the game much smarter than that. By openly embracing Linux, IBM is using Linux as a club against ALL their competitors. If your a large corporation who's looking for the answer to a complex business issue, who would you go to? IBM unlike any of their competitors has the ability to sell their customers what ever they want. Want mainframes?, IBM's got 'em. Want Windows desktops?, IBM's got 'em. Looking for inexpensive Intel boxes running Linux?, IBM's got 'em. Want all three and support for them? IBM's got that too. Couple these offerings with DB2, Websphere, MQSeries, Tivoli, and Domino and IBM has the most impressive stable in all of IT.
It isn't just Microsoft that need worry. Compaq, HP, and Sun should be taking careful notes. In fact, I hope they do, because choice is good.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
They can say whatever they want. Linux will bloom people!
Yes. But behind-the-scenes transaction handling has no connection to the desktop world. I am tired of seeing every article like "Home Depot to use Linux-driven cash registers" turned into a reason for zealotry.
WAY too many financial institutions use M$ languages and OS's for their internal users... like customer support and other operations centers. VB applications abound...
I've found that the best way to get companies to move away from M$ programming languages is to suggest the portability and standardization and other benefits that occur when you start making your apps available through a web interface. Then, as the developer on that project, keep everything as cross-platform, cross-browser as possible. Once the frontend/interface doesn't require a M$ language to support it, there becomes less of a reason to stay on the architecture.
In addition, this approach is becoming much more successful since EVERYONE is trying to cut costs... and what's a better way to cut costs then eliminate the need for costly M$ licenses?
We do lots of stuff for DMSO. Not evil, or particularly secret, but it is fun. Getting data that's been saved in a zillion formats over the years converted to XML and stored in oracle dbs and allowing web access to that same data. We're so buzzword compliant it's painful.
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I used to work at a small mutual fund company where the network admin got to deal with SIAC for a project. It seemed as if they were a big mainframe shop and the network admin ended up creating a translation dictionary between industry terms and SIAC terms. Let's say (not accurate for obvious NDA reasons), they would say something like street and ths would mean to us ethernet cable.
It was fun working with them. Once we had that translation dictionary sorted out we fully understood what they were telling us.
But more to my main point, is that I'm happy to hear they're going to use Linux, but most financial institutions would run linux anyway. Mainly due to admins with tiny budgets. Like I was given 6 grand to put up a development database server. No way I could afford licenses of Sybase for a Sun box that would cost me that much (even though I would have preferred Solaris), I wound up getting a dual processor VA Linux Systems box and then downloaded Sybase Adaptive Server for Linux (license is free for development use). So I got a pretty nice performance development database box and didn't go over budget.
Needless to say when I left working at the mutual fund company they had more linux systems than HP 9000's or Sun Ultra Enterprise's put together. Granted I met with a ton of resistance to put the first linux box into place, but then management got used to being able to do stuff on the cheap, so more low budget projects kept creeping up, which meant more linux boxes to do the work.
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
It's going to be interesting to see if IBM can get Linux to work on the computers that run the New York Stock Exchange.
This by the far the ultimate test of Linux itself in a commercial environment, given that NYSE share volumes run into the billions of shares traded per day. I wonder will the 2.4.x kernel be ready to handle this massive load, one that used to be handled by proprietary UNIX variants and IBM's MV/MVS.
I remember 15 years ago, while still working with a Wall Street firm. I was visiting a programming friend at another shop, who amazed me with some wild stuff he was doing on a Sun. I asked him, did he think that the industry (we didn't use hip terms like "the street") would shed the IBMs mains and VAXen minis for a Unix-based platform. He turned to the screen and ran features on his creation that we only dreamed of on these other systems. Alarms, alerts, graphics, etc ... stuff that even PDAs can do now.
Now, well away from Wall Street, and away from the buzz, I wonder how many back rooms are filled with geek projects running on Linux, the same way they were being hacked out on Suns 15 years ago ? If it is what I suspect it might be, then Mr.Gates has a problem that can't be factored with FUD.
As I recall, it was financial apps like VisCalc and Lotus 1-2-3 that greatly aided the PC revolution. Likewise, as business men and women endured dragging sowing machine size luggables around airports, the portable industry grew.
Could it be that an operating system, such as Linux, and all that it offers in frugality and flexibility, is indeed the killer app ? If so,
how ironic that it appears that big-business may be aiding of all things, the Open Source movement.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
The bad part of this is that it took MSFT 20+ years to get where they are; it will probably take another 20+ years for them to be relegated to insignificance (in terms of their influence on the market).
However, it's announcements like this which show that major institutions are now beginning to see past the FUD of 'not proven', 'no support', 'not scalable' and 'not stable'. Of course, there will still be myriads of clueless CIOs who believe the FUD, but it's data points like this one which will play a role in converting even this crowd. After all, (we all know) Linux is stable and you can't really beat the price. It's funny/ironic though that by time Linux became viable, MSFT for the first time in 20+ years actually got their act together and produced a reasonably stable system (Win2K). If guess competition is good for something after all
does running the stock exchange data equal world domination?
it's a happy day for the penguins!!
desktops/pda's...here we come.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Slashdot uses MySQL, anyone using MySQL and a large db with lots of traffic knows MySQL is not suited for the task, thats why slashdot goes down. Im sure NYSE knows about this and will choose either oracle or another larger db on a different OS. when NYSE sais they are switching to linux they dont say what parts they are switching, all or some.
Chris Lee
lee@mediawaveonline.com
I came from a job in industrial automation. Wrote custom device drivers for 82c55 chipsets, ADC/DAC cards, things like that. Now I'm doing (takes deep breath) [buzzword compliance alert] custom b2b and b2c XML enabled web applications with oracle databases and portal servers for government and private industry contracts using C++, Perl, and Python on multiple platforms. [end buzzword compliance] So I've gone from twiddling bits and machine code programming to doing XML and database applications.
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Remember, the stock market crash just took a big bite out of these folks' bottom lines. Management still wants to see an increase in profits. Two years ago their problem was keeping up with new growth; today, the name of the game is cutting costs.
A company running primarily Linux, or having Linux in the mix, is less likely to run Notes and require your services than a pure Windows shop is.
I'm not claiming Linux is dominating the small/medium sized companies, because it isn't (at least not yet :), but claiming that Linux isn't making any inroads with that category of companies because a group of Lotus Notes using companies don't have a clue about Linux isn't exactly very credible.
They will be using Linux as the platform for the messaging and information systems between the Exchange and the brokers/dealers, not the actual Exchange itself. I'm not saying these systems are not mission critical, I'm just reading the article!
Running the actual Exchange would be a major coop, but I don't think there is any chance of seeing that happen for a few years yet.
Note: I'm not saying Linux can't be used to run the Exchange, but I think this is best handled by a full-blown enterprise platform at this point in the development of Linux.
Linux seems mired in two markets: High-end, heavy-metal processing, and the geek crowd. It doesn't show up in the middle very much.
Where is Linux in vertical business markets? Where are the integrators? Where is the market for business-oriented components? If such markets exist for Linux, they aren't very prominent.
Let's put it another way: Look on Freshmeat for "point of sale" and "MP3 player". Guess which one has four hits, and which one has more than a hundred? Guess which type of software is more relevant to business?
Linux scales small (older PCs, personal workstations) or large (Beowulf clusters, High-Performance Computing), but it seems to be missing something in the middle ground where most business resides.
That fact makes it very difficult to convince business-oriented companies to support Linux. Beyond the fact that Linux users believe everything should be "free" as in beer, there isn't sufficient support for vertical market development. Integrators build software from components, usually with VB or Delphi under Windows. Where is the component market for Linux? For that matter, where is a common, well-supported, universal component architecture for the penguin? Heck, I still haven't found a Linux installation system that is friendly to non-geeks.
The question is: Does Linux want to cater to the middle ground, to business and "normal" folk? Or should Linux stay where it is strong, leaving the middle to Mr. Gates and his minions?
All about me
Just an errant thought as I read the article. Could it be the old giant, IBM has shown us some of the blue-fu that has kept this company around near or on the top for so many years ? For example:
... selling services. Let's face it, there's not much in the way of COTS that Microsoft can FUD with when it comes to Wall Streeters, and their propensity to roll and re-roll their own apps.
Bird 1 - undercutting Sun high-end
"SIAC's Artmail applications previously ran on Sun Microsystems Inc. servers that used Unix. But they will now run on IBM Linux servers linked to an IBM mainframe system."
IBM's girthieness has been a liability in the past. Not so much for the hardware itself; though expensive. Rather, much of the rub has been on the expense and limitations of its operating system, as anyone using MVS will attest. Linux literally flips that around against it's competitors, forcing companies such as Sun's high-end to compete chip-to-chip with IBM's mid to low end iron.
Stone 2 - Microsoft's cost of Open Source argument
"Though basic Linux software is free, IBM makes money by selling the middleware that links Linux with existing software and computer systems at places like SIAC. It also makes money by selling Linux servers and services for Linux-based systems."
Here IBM parlays one of its biggest, and most enduring strengths
Kudos to someone where at Itty Bitty Machines for figuring this one out.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Unfortunately this has nothign to do with traders, as SIAC handles nothing on the actual floors of either NYSE or AMEX. Almost all traders on the floor don't even use PCs. People at posts (specialists) use PCs, and its usually windows with Excel. Traders use scientific calculators with the Black-Scholles model stored as a formula, or a hand-held PC given to them by their brokerage house.
SIAC is all back-end: allocation of money and clearing of the transaction. Your right in the fact that traders would never hack a script together, but they probably would never know how to do it in the first place. I've learned that in most cases traders hate coding, and coders hate trading.
I work for a Broker/Dealer, so I know a little about the markets.
To those of you who say - 'Big deal, they still use Windows on teh desktop' Heh - Desktop OS sales do not have huge profit margins - OEMs & large companies get huge discounts. Microsoft needs to rule the backend because server software margins are much higher. SO this IS a hit to them. A potential conversion from *nix to MS hurts them. Sure, in this case one Unix replaces another, but MS still loses a potential slient for lots and lots of server licenses.
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THe OS is not a competitive edge here; it's Tivoli and the custome software. IBM is much better off giving up its maintenance and development costs--and htis holds even if AIX is moderately superior to Linux for the task at hand.
hawk, economist
The hard part of that plan is keeping the project cross-platform and cross-browser. You'll run headlong into weenies that want to write for IE only. And in a perverse way, they have a point-- certainly is easier to write for only one browser. Not that I agree, of course. What would be interesting, though, is to try to document how different things break depending on which version of IE you're running. Then the argument can be made that if you're already going to have to write your web interface to work on all these versions of IE, you might as well make it fully cross-browser while you're at it.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
so where you at? you obviously work for/close/with us...
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
Well.. all I can say about this is that we think that financial people are idiots... that is until they adopt our software, and then they're smart, savy business people.
I think they're still idiots, but they've made a lucky choice or a good choice through council.
Hey.. these are the same guys that judge the entire Internet based on Pets.com and Webvan.com...
"Yes.. no matter what the culture, folk dancing is stupid." -MST3K
It's not a matter of "big iron" and "geek desktops". It's about servers. The reason you don't see point-of-sale systems on Linux is that Linux--like any Unix--is still a relatively awkward choice for standalone and small-network desktop use. It's easy enough to get running for one-off engineering workstations and for hundreds or thousands of X terminals, but the cost savings and overall benefits of a Unix just aren't there for those 5-100 seat mixed-use installations found in most desktop environments.
.5TB range can run on Linux now. And that's a lot of databases.
.NET) or with Java. And since that Java code really does move--unmodified--from Windows developer workstations to staging servers and production boxes that can be running any of a good dozen OSes on hardware going all the way up to mainframes, with application servers that are increasingly interoperable and interchangeable, Java's looking pretty good.
Want a stable, non-windowed PC-based cash register? Linux gives you nothing you can't get with DOS, Netware or OS/2-based systems. There's little reason for vendors to port, and the application is so narrow that Linux offers nothing but a savings on OS licenses, which are insignificant to the cost of a 5-station point-of-sale system.
Running a small- to mid-sized office? Linux is a decent way to save on servers, and many companies do so, buying mail and file-sharing appliances like Cobalt Qubes, or IBM's Small Business Server software bundle, which gives small but ambitious companies a nicely priced bundle of DB2, Domino and Websphere. Still others bring on the accountant's nephew to set up a Samba server or two. But on the desktop? Unix and Linux office suites are mediocre at best, the best being slower and more memory-hungry than MS Office. And you can be the one to tell the senior managers how good Linux is the tenth time they can't properly open an MS Office file that was mailed to them.
Where Linux is taking over the world is on servers, and now it's not just the usual HTTP, Samba, DNS and SMTP services. In the past year, with good 1.3.x JVMs from Sun and IBM, Linux is now on par with any other platform, dollar for dollar, for running J2EE application servers.
If you're running clusters of Weblogic, Websphere or other EJB/servlet/JSP engines (Tomcat, JRun, EJBoss, etc.), there's simply no longer any technical reason to do it on Solaris, HPUX, Win2K or AIX. If you have a decent JVM (as Linux has) and decent networking and memory management (as Linux has, especially with 2.4), that's all that really matters. Why pay $700, $3000 or more on OS licenses and OS support per machine for something that you just want to (1) stay up and (2) run a Java app server or one or more of its support systems like a message queue?
Moreover, the move to journaling filesystems and better support for external storage, and the availability of many mainstream commercial-grade backup and system management tools means Linux is also a perfectly good way to run all those 1-4 CPU database servers. Oracle and DB2 on Linux aren't going to eat into the Sun E10000's turf or IBM's OS/400 and System/390 spaces just yet, but all those databases running on 1U-5U rack equipment with storage in the
Add to that the fact that Linux has become (officially or not) the reference platform for a lot of Unix software, and the reference x86 Unix for many others (see Sybase) and Linux looks poised to eat not just the low end but also the middle of the server market.
The success of server-side Java has a lot to do with this. Right now, the overwhelming share of new server-side development is being done either with the MS platform (ASP, MTS, COM and the early bits of
Sure Linux is seriously eating into proprietary Unix market share, but think about it a little more carefully. These guys are looking for something that's cheaper and easier to deploy than the Sun boxes they're currently using. Without Linux, the only choices are 1)eat the costs and stick with Unix, 2)port to Windows (also at considerable expense).
The breadth of offerings available for Linux (cheap 1U boxes, Mainframe LPARS, massive servers) make it a natural choice for people who might otherwise leave the Unix world altogether. It's easy to port from Unix to Linux, and you can run your app. on any hardware imaginable.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Don't think for a second that MS execs' stomachs are not turning over about this deal.
This is a key financial services application, and opens the door for acceptance of linux in key financial markets. Microsoft was going to undersell and overmarket traditional UNIX vendors and eat into the server market. Once their foot was in the door, extend and embrace.
Guess what - the markets grow from the bottom. It happened with DOS against MacOS. It happened with Windows95 against OS/2. It happened with NT against Unix. And now it is happening with linux against Windows.
This could have been a HUGE win for Microsoft. Instead, it is another notch in IBM's belt, and a huge boost for linux in the perception of CTOs. Microsoft can't buy that kind of publicity.
MS in turn uses Nasdaq (and Dell, and several other captive "friends") as examples of "large enterprises that chose Windows as their strategic OS". It makes you almost feel sorry for Nasdaq. Well... for their sysadmins, anyway.
The poster is using high-order byte "smart quotes" that are not standard ASCII. These will render in your Linux or Non-MS browser as question marks. I think Mozilla handles them correctly.
Every time something like the Home Depot thing occurs, it provides more evidence that Linux can do useful stuff.
Name any of the OSes used for embedded systems. Are they on the desktop? No. It is irrelevant.
The pointlessness of this kind of advocacy is what Amiga "fans" never understood. Did it matter that Amigas were used in certain kinds of high-end production work? Or that an Amiga showed up in the background of a popular sitcom? _NO_.
I think you guys need to read this again. NYSE does not run on Linux. A messaging system that connects to NYSE and advises external parties of trades runs on Linux. Apparently the core systems are still running... whatever it is they used to run.
Still a big deal for Linux, but you can't really say NYSE runs on Linux. You could say that PART of NYSE runs on Linux.
WebGuyCS
Sun's gotta love it in the long run. I never had trouble talking to Sun boxes with Linux. Using MS junk was a nightmare. Credibility there brings the Linux desktop that much closer to me here.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Look, the Microsoft stock prices are dropping to 0. Oh well, must be a bug in the system. INSERT EVIL LAUGH HERE
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
They can try! Just look at Hotmail. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
For anyone who wasn't fortunate enough to attend the annual Usenix Technichal Conference for 2001, the keynote address was (brilliantly) delivered by Daniel D. Frye, Director of the IBM Linux Technology Center. In the talk, and the following Q&A, he made it explicitly clear that IBM's position on Linux was that it would be ready for the 24/7 no-downtime, mission-critical environment (like the financial sector), soon, but that it wasn't yet. The indication was something like 5 years or so, and the conference was 2 months ago.
I wonder what changed IBM's position so quickly?
He either comes off as a real interesting guy with encyclopedic knowledge,or a pathological liar with an ax to grind
Enterprise or Tower?
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
No shit. Cool deal. What floor?
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
This definitely changes things. No one with a three-digit IQ would ever claim that Solaris, for example, is not robust enough for commercial work. Even Microsoft, in all of its arrogance, has not said that (though they have tried to proclaim that NT was superior). But there have been many naysayers when it comes to Linux as a viable option for commercial deployment.
If this is successful, it will show that Microsoft's portrayal of Linux as a toy for geeks was both unfounded and unfair. If the NYSE relies on Linux, the pro-Microsoft factions in corporate IS departments will be unable to make convincing arguments that Linux poses a threat to network security or stability. It will show beyond any reasonable doubt that Linux scales, implements robust security, and can be deployed and maintained in a demanding environment.
i'm not right now, but yes, that's what i do. little bit of sysadmin-ing, etc. yes, segmentation does suck. that's why i'm asking the ol' division manager to put me on something else...
that segmentation lab isn't so bad... we have a lot of neat machines in there...
what div you in? heh, i won't tell the manager you're slashdotting - i do this nearly every day when i gotta get away from a big fuggen shell script or something...
you may have seen me around... long blond pony tail (generally), never wear my badge...
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
From the article:
[quote]
Patrick says a strong point of Linux software is that data on a stock transaction is relayed from one party to another without interference
[/quote]
Please tell me, what's so unique about Linux software that NO OTHER software is able to do this? And what has this to do with 'linux' especially? If DB2 does the transaction processing controlled by f.e. tuxedo, what does that have to do with Linux? Nothing, you can run these systems on any OS supported by these applications.
From the article:
[quote]
"The (Linux system) offers users the ability to crawl onto the reliability and shared resources of the IBM mainframe," Graham.
[/quote]
So, what is this mainframe doing here? The whole setup isn't running TOTALLY on Linux, it still needs a phat Mainframe to run, hell, to work efficiently. So tell me, where is the big shift to Linux in this picture?
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Now maybe everyone can shut up about whether Linux is "enterprise-ready." I don't think you get much more Enterprise-class than this. Not only is it a massive volume of data, but it's highly sensative data. In the case of the NYSE, much of our economy is based around the day-to-day functioning of these systems.
Security here, thank you. We now have enough information to identify you and revoke your security clearance. Please surrender your belongings to the gentlemen in black suits who will strip-search you on the way out...
You make a good point, but people have been talking about the commoditization of the operating system for years. Microsoft knows it, that's why they're so interested in monopoly on web services -- they know that inertia is the only thing keeping their OS monopoly going.
BTW, when you say "correlations", I think you mean "corollaries".
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Most mainstream PC-based point-of-sale systems are console applications or, if they're graphical at all, they run in a VGA framebuffer mode. The server OS might be NT, Novell or OS/2, purchased at an OEM price of under $600. Sometimes a whole lot less than $600.
The point of sale terminals themselves often aren't running Win9x or any version of Windows, for that matter, though of course some do. A mouse is seldom involved. Indeed, there usually isn't any pointing device. Just a keyboard (or just a POS keypad), maybe a barcode scanner, a touchscreen or a signature capture pad, and a cash drawer.
Yes, the application could be made cheaper. The vendor could eliminate $200-$600 in server OS costs, and anywhere from $20-$120 per terminal in client OS costs.
The POS system itself probably sells to the customer for, say, $30,000, including hardware, software, installation and setup, integration with your accounting system (which isn't running on Linux, I'd wager), and a 3-5 year support contract.
The vendor's hardware costs might be $1500 for the server box, $700 for each PC, and something like $800 for each PC's POS hardware peripherals. So let's say the hardware for the whole 5-station system costs them $9000. Those OS licenses might be adding a thousand dollars to each 5-station system going out the door. And though your POS terminals can be Pentiums since they're not doing much processing, theyaren't Pentiums because you can't buy new Pentiums. You buy hardware that your company will be comfortable supporting for 5 years or more, and that means hardware consistency is a major goal. You might buy PCs a thousand or more at a time, and servers a hundred or more at a time in order to ensure a 6-month (or longer) supply of identical hardware with identical drives, controllers, video cards, motherboard layouts, NICs and BIOS revs. Mix and match is foolish if you're in a business making a lot of its money from fixed-price support contracts.
So your assignment is to tell me how many of these typical 5-station POS packages a vendor has to sell with Linux at a savings of (and I'm being generous here) $1000 each in order to justify the money spent porting the application, testing it, and hiring and training a second team of customer support and professional services people to support this second version of software that wasn't broken in the first place.
Now you're porting the software. The current vision was written in, say, VB or maybe C or maybe even some kind of Pascal, or, even more likely, some Foxbase-family language, and calls to a smallish relational database engine whose main strength is that it runs for weeks or months at a time without any maintenenace beyond swapping backup tapes. It's old code in an old version of an old language, and it's tied to one (probably old) database engine. Porting isn't going to be a simple matter of recompiling and changing an ODBC DSN. It's going to be work. Work that will result in a more modern, portable application, but work nonetheless. Still want to do it? Great. Now put the porting team together.
Remember: hiring a junior-level programmer you're paying $45,000/year to is costing your company $60,000 once you pay them benefits, train them and give them a desk and a PC. And one programmer isn't going to be able to do the port, write the new manuals, do the QA, revamp the customer training course, and provide tech support. There are a few bodies involved.
Linux will find its way into point-of-sale systems, just as it's found its way into shop-floor terminals in factories and warehouses. But it will only get there in the context of new products, or as a result of clean-slate rewrites of applications when an old version can no longer be extended and upgraded effectively. And those aren't done on a whim.
Linux is fine for point-of-sale systems. It just isn't used for many at this point, and OS dogma isn't a good reason for existing vendors to rush into it when they have products that work already.
As for Apache, MySQL and Perl/PHP/Python as the basis of such a system.. well.. I'm sure there's worse out there, but I don't think too many stores would want to use a web browser as their cash-register interface. You do intend to use a browser, right? Web browsers are bad tools for quick, reliable data entry. Too much scrolling and mouse movement.
Also, you'd have to write browser plugins to control and access things like a cash drawer, a signature tablet and a UPC scanner. Again, not out of the question, but sort of unneccessary.
And as far as the backend goes, why MySQL? Postgres is much more robust and provides an environment more in line with what you get in a commercial database. Once your data model starts to get complicated and you're doing a lot of inserts and updates, it's going to look like a better choice.
Python is a very nice language, though once you're putting it behind an HTTP server, you may consider Zope in place of Apache. PHP? Seems kind of limiting. Perl's not going to make for the most maintainable codebase. But language isn't really the issue. Architecture is. And maybe maintainability too.
An HTTP backend might be okay, though the fact that it's stateless and doesn't offer a satisfactoy way to push out alerts from the central server is a drawback. This is, after all, a network of cash registers you're building here, not a public website.
If it's still going to be HTTP, and the push-pull issue can be resolved elegantly, I'd just use HTTP as a transport layer and instead of a browser and write the frontend as a custom ncurses application (console mode!) with access to the esoteric hardware, and client-server communication via SOAP. And quite likely instead of HTTP, I'd consider something more persistent and two-way for the SOAP transport...though tiny HTTP listeners on the clients wouldn't be out of the question.
The language and "app server" engine? Those are the least important choices. Any combination that is easy to deploy, is reliable, and is easy to maintain and extend will do. Java on Tomcat/EJBoss? Python on Apache or Zope? Standalone Perl with SOAP::Lite? Whatever.
Give it time. Rome wasn't built in a day.
War is necrophilia.
hawk