Re:People are the key (Score 2, Insightful)

Apparently you made the mistake of posting an observation based on actual real-life experience.

This is generally a bad idea on /. ;)

But I fully agree, and I have made the same observations. I have worked for a couple of ISPs and a couple of web development firms, and all the "heavy" tech guys (and girls) have turned out to known their way around Linux and/or *BSD and/or Solaris. Often all three, and more.

This might be that good tech people tend to find Unix/Linux a useful toy, or that tech people who use Unix/Linux have to actually learn how things work, to do the things they want.

Of course, I'm sure there are alot of really good tech people who have never played around with Unix/Linux. Especially programmers could likely fall into this category.

But to try to keep this post slightly on topic - how inexpensive, reliable and optimal your OSS solution will be all depends on the techies you hire. Agreed.