Recently I returned from the fantastic LinuxFest Northwest 2009 conference in Bellingham, Washington, a small city north of Seattle and home to a variety of people, from self-described "ancient hippies" to software people who have fled Redmond for a quieter life. On my return flight, which left from the Bellingham airport, I sat next to a gentleman of "about my age." When I greeted him, he responded with a hint of a Scottish accent.

Our small talk turned to our occupations: I told him about my job "selling Free Software," and he told me about his job as a systems engineer for Chevron. As the conversation continued, he discussed all of his efforts to use Microsoft products and the number of times they jammed up on him. His voice grew warm as he talked about how Unix systems and Linux systems were much more stable and how he liked them a lot better.

Then he said something that I had heard a long time ago: "Of course, for mission-critical applications, real mission-critical applications, the type of applications that absolutely have to work, we would never use software-controlled computers. Hydraulics are the way to go. Software is just too unreliable."

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