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Comment by HeyLaughingBoy

14 days ago

It's also going to take a hell of a lot longer and cost more than buying an Outlook license. If I was lead on that project, you'd have an uphill battle trying to convince me that spending $100k+ on an email solution unless you can point to specific, serious deficiencies in the existing off the shelf solutions.

Software Engineering is far from a lost art: part of the practice is intelligently making cost-benefit decisions.

The current solution is literally causing problems in space. Space-grade engineering is expensive, but having things go wrong on your already very expensive mission is even more expensive.

  • Until we've had this failure, I do agree that using COTS software was the logical choice. And now we know better.

    • Sure, but people who didn't know better until this particular incident do not deserve the title "engineer". Being able to classify and manage risks before they happen is engineering 101.

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  • It’s a personal communication device. It’s not mission critical.