>>I enjoyed my time in the large scale world but just the thought of one of those pointless meetings makes me shudder now.
LOL. My current experience is that even the largest customer shrugs over precise software origin as long as it delivers. In fact we shelved one ultra cool Jquery web option because it was too difficult to get individual browser instances to behave like modal fat client windows communicating with each other. We found a way- but a security guru warned that one day it would be a hack vector and MS would close it off, breaking our app without warning. The $B customer refused the risk and that was that.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1