Speaking of Major Companies Moving to Linux

According to this article, Oracle will finish switching its 9,000-person in-house programming staff to Linux by the end of 2004. Why?
“By the end of the year, (Linux) is our core platform,” Coekaerts said. Oracle is switching because Linux systems are less expensive and faster, he added.
A few other interesting points:
– The new systems are provided by multiple computer makers and use several versions of Linux from the top two sellers of the open-source operating system, Red Hat and Novell. This seems to be a fairly common trend. Seems that companies like that they can get a quality product from multiple vendors and avoid the vendor lock in that has happened in the past. Imagine that.
– It's not often that Oracle makes such a change. The last time it did so was in the early 1990s, moving from Digital Equipment's VMS to Sun's Solaris, he said. This should serve as more evidence that moving to Linux and Open Source should no longer be seen as a gamble.
–jeremy