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Ford To Move To Linux

Posted by simoniker on from the welcome-to-model-free dept.

KingDaveRa writes "The Register is reporting that motor giant Ford is switching to Linux for its sales systems, human resources, customer relations and infrastructure, referencing a report in yesterday's Scotland on Sunday. According to The Register, the biggest battle was over which Linux vendor to use - RedHat or SuSE." Update: 09/16 01:51 GMT by T : An anonymous reader points to this NewsForge report, according to which Ford is not moving to Linux.

8 of 562 comments (clear)

  1. What about Burlington in 1999? by garcia · · Score: 5, Informative

    Whoever won, the contract is a serious step forward for Linux in the corporporate market...

    Are you meaning to tell me that Burlington Coat Factory's 1300 Linux boxes back in 1999 wasn't a major win for corporate Linux? ;-)

    At the time I remembering thinking that it was a pretty important step in showing that Linux was a viable alternative. Apparently no one listened. Is anyone going to listen to Ford?

    1. Re:What about Burlington in 1999? by jeffkjo1 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ford is everywhere... this will be used by their dealerships, salespeople, and everything in between. Ford employs nearly 370,000 people... that's a lot of people coming in contact with linux everyday.

      I don't know about you, but the Burlington Coat Factory near me doesn't ever seem to have many customers, or employees.
      The exact opposite can be said about the local Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Volvo, Land Rover (ok I'll stop) dealerships.

    2. Re:What about Burlington in 1999? by Lawbeefaroni · · Score: 4, Informative

      Burlington Coat Factory (NYSE: BCF) FY 2002 revenue: $2.72 Billion.

      Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) 6 month revenue to 6/2003: $81.56 Billion.

      Source: finance.yahoo.com

      --
      "When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
  2. Re:Fraid not by WindBourne · · Score: 5, Informative

    Funny that you mention VW. They are busy also moving a lot of their software over to Linux. It is currently in late beta, but should be available soon for dealers.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  3. Servers not Workstations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ford IS NOT replacing any of their Windows workstations with Unix at present in fact they are in the middle of upgrading all W2K workstations with XP.

    This is a server consolidation project moving all exisisting servers onto large (multi processor etc etc) Unix machines.

  4. What about engineering by kippy · · Score: 4, Informative

    I work for an automotive software vendor. Ford is one of our biggest customers and they require that our development and releases be done on HPUX. We all hate HPUX around here but if the customer wants it, they get it.

    I'm anxious to know if this Linux adoption will switch their engineering requirements. I guess only time will tell.

    --
    Blaze a trail to the New World
  5. Ford move to Linux untrue! by bigbadwlf · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to this article at NewsForge, the Ford move to Linux is untrue.

    -- snip --
    Joan Witte, Communications Manager for Ford Motor Information Technology, had this statement to make late this afternoon when I called her at her Detroit office about a story being reported that Ford was moving to Linux.

    Witte said "Like any other company, Ford Motor is looking at Linux, primarily in the application space. We presently have an enterprise-wide agreement with Microsoft to handle our collaborative solutions. We aren't contemplating using Linux in this area, and don't contemplate doing that in the foreseeable future."
    -- snip --

  6. STORY IS UNTRUE - LINK by FreeLinux · · Score: 5, Informative

    Newsforge reports is reporting that this story is untrue. Sad but, as I suspected.