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Lufthansa Systems Chooses Linux
Nice2Cats writes "Remember all of the jokes about operating systems as airlines? Well, Heise is reporting that Linux is just going to take over the computer systems of Germany's airline Lufthansa instead. SuSE and Lufthansa Systems have a joint press release (in German, it should appear here when it comes out in English) out where Karlheinz Natt from Lufthansa Systems gushes (my translation): 'We are registering a steadily increasing demand for Linux-based solutions from our customers.' "
An upfront fee yes, but keep in mind that quite a bit of the airline industry is using stuff so old that it isn't much supported by anything anymore. In theory, making those apps in Linux will allow them to easily reintegrate and recompile them on whatever we will be using in the future.
And all the airlines aren't hemmoraging money, mainly just the American ones. The euorpean airline industry has for the most part stablized.
So lately there's been a couple stories about SuSE and German institutions hooking up, and also the perennial outsourcing development to 2nd-world countries discussion. On a gut instinct level, I'm for the former (down with The Man!) and against the latter (wait! I want that job!). However, my feelings about both are a bit more complicated.
You see, it's hard not to see that SuSE stuff as largely influenced by nationalism. This is not to day it's a bad choice, presumably the clients like the fact that the SuSE folks speak fluent German, which you probably can't say for Mandrake, RedHat, or Redflag. But, you know, it still has that aura of "help our boys, damn those 3v1l feriners."
The outsourcing development to 2nd-world companies is, OTOH, a-nationalistic. Much of the debate about it is full of people wrapping themselves in the flag and the like. Very much like labor unions when manufacturing jobs go overseas. The fact of the matter, however, is that those folks in India need that job much more than you do. You wouldn't think of doing the job for $4k/year, whereas they'll jump at the opportunity. And if you're a 1st worlder whose job has *not* been shipped overseas, you directly benefit from this, as development costs are (allegedly) lower.
So, the economist in me is like "Hoo-ah! Ship those jobs overseas. I can always get a job as a plumber (probably making more than I am now)." But, of course, it's not that simple. First off, you really need to be a big corp to start outsourcing overseas. You need a certain amount of infrastructure &c. Also note that due to increasing returns to investment and the like, big commercial software firms tend to become monopolies. This is much worse for the consumer than subsidizing overpriced, lazy 1st world developers. So to a large extent, buying from the local business is a sound economic decision, as it prevents you from getting locked in to a monopolist. This is especially true for organizations like governments, who have an obligation to protect their citizens from failures in the market.
So I come to my concluding paragraph with no conclusion. I'm still of two minds on the whole economic nationalism thing. If perfect competition could be insured, a policy of buying locally would be folly. However, power laws create huge distortions of market economics. Hard to say, at least for me.
"As long as the govt. doesn't get into the distribution business, it doesn't even have to put their changes back into the pool, although it would be a good idea for most code."
Why would that be a good idea for most code? The government is not in the business of supplying people with free code.
the timing seems odd, given that the airlines are all hemmoraging money right now...
On the contrary, these are exactly the economic conditions under which an up-front investment to reduce long-term operating costs make more sense than ever. It's only during the fat times that gross inefficiencies from, say, excessive downtime or wasteful license audits, can go unnoticed and uncorrected.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?