Re:2038: Only 21 years away
by tyingq on Tuesday March 21, 2017 @01:59PM
(#13924571)
Right, but at a high level, I'm answering why there might be money in consulting on this later.
There will be Fortune 500 companies that have old ntp clients running somewhere in 2038...pretty much guaranteed. They'll also have apps with 32 time_t structures running as well, database columns that overflow, etc. Or maybe they won't, but aren't sure. You sell them a service that audits all of those things, scripts that look for troublesome stuff using source code greps, network sniffing for old protocols, static analysis, simplistic parsing of ldd, etc. And, a prepackaged methodology, spreadsheets, PowerPoint to socialize the effort, and so on.
It was the same for Y2K. Fixes for many things were available well ahead of time. Companies had no methodology or tools to ensure that the fixes were in place.
There will be Fortune 500 companies that have old ntp clients running somewhere in 2038...pretty much guaranteed. They'll also have apps with 32 time_t structures running as well, database columns that overflow, etc. Or maybe they won't, but aren't sure. You sell them a service that audits all of those things, scripts that look for troublesome stuff using source code greps, network sniffing for old protocols, static analysis, simplistic parsing of ldd, etc. And, a prepackaged methodology, spreadsheets, PowerPoint to socialize the effort, and so on.
It was the same for Y2K. Fixes for many things were available well ahead of time. Companies had no methodology or tools to ensure that the fixes were in place.