US Postal Service Moves To GNU/Linux

twitter writes "The US Postal Service has moved its Cobol package tracking software to HP machines running GNU/Linux. 1,300 servers handle 40 million transactions a day and cost less than the last system, which was based on a Sun Solaris environment." The migration took a year. The USPS isn't spelling how big the savings are, except that they are "significant."

Comments

Re:Sure, runs on GNU/Linux

[JSBiff]

"What I find disheartening is the fact that businesses are no longer able to see education and training of employees as a worthwhile investment. . . they have no qualms with firing and laying off people at-will"

Why spend money to train someone you're going to lay-off in 6 months to a year from now, when you can just go out to the job market and hire someone who is already experienced, have them be productive from almost day 1, then when the (ex)CEO deploys the golden parachute and retires to the Bahamas, and you need to lay people off, they are *already done with the code* whereas the new guy you were training is just getting started?