[rescue] ham gear

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 @ 08:47 -0600, Brian Dunbar said:

> On the other hand - sometimes the nifty-keen custom vertical  
> application is too costly (up front) so while you've got demo units  
> when the shooting starts .. that's all you've got.

Ah, but now you are changing the subject and talking about poorly
written software.

The COTS solution is only good if it does most of what you want right
from the start. Once you get down to 80% or less, it starts getting very
expensive to adapt to your work.

The bigger problem is that common COTS software is horribly written
these days. Most of it was fine 15 years ago, and since then has kept
adding features in an endless drive to eliminate the competition instead
of making it work well.

A good example is office suites (frequently used as COTS parts in larger
systems). They long ago reached the point where they would do 99% of
everything you needed. In the last 10 years or so they've done nothing
but bloat and add features few people need.

Instead of focusing on quality and performance, a lot of COTS software
is designed to win marketing wars.

Thus they often make poor foundations or parts in larger integrated
systems.

If COTS software had different motivations, it might work out better.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["There is no such thing as security.  Life
is either bold adventure, or it is nothing -- Helen Keller"]