Hi Don,
Thank you very much for sharing. Please never worry about offending me -- I'm very easy going, hard to offend and am someone who enjoys learning and considering other points of view. Moreover, you are among the handful of people here whose post I most enjoy reading and have benefited from. Thank you **very** much!
I appreciate what you said about the novice .vs expert knowledge bases. Basically, without revealing what I'm not allowed, this is a current mainframe based system that's being considered for webification or rewritting for the web. It's in the consideration, scoping and planning stage. I have input into the process. I also may do some of the development work on it.
So far, all the consideration is on commercial products -- lots of application server this and middleware that. These folks aren't familiar with open source at all. I would like to get an open source solution considered for all or part of the project **IF** it's up to the task and scale of what needs to be done. This is what I was refering to as hoping to champion open source. Since I have no experience pushing the envelope with the open source software that many here are experienced with, I thought I would ask for input here. I figured some here might have experiences with very large systems and would be willing to share their insights and opinions.
I often wonder just how big a task open source is currently up to task for -- what it can and can't handle -- so I know when it is and isn't the appropriate tool for whatever project I'm giving input for. My background is mostly very large mission critical mainframe systems.
Again, in the kind of large companies I've always worked for open source often isn't even on the radar. I like to at least raise awareness and possible see it used successfully.
Thank you again, as always for sharing. I almost always learn from your post!
Louis
