Safety-critical systems

Of course the same type of media "sources" that would introduce confusion about whether somehow Linux is "the work of a murderer" because one of many thousands of contributors killed someone wouldn't consider it important to distinguish between...

- The aeroplane runs Linux on an embedded PC which provides 64 channels of streaming music to passengers. If it fails passengers will watch a movie.

- The aeroplane runs Linux on a flight-related but non-essential system. If it fails the pilot will curse it and log it as a fault, but there's a million-to-one chance of this distraction contributing to an accident.

- The plane's engines run on a mixture of fairy dust and Puppy Linux. A bug in the IRC client will cause the wings to fall off and send your plane nose-diving into a mountain.

And it's not as though they're picking on us. When car manufacturers look at using Windows embedded, the same sources will happily assume that somehow Windows will control the engine and steering rather than, as is closer to reality, a DVD player and the stereo.