An area that is likely to grow immensely in importance over the next couple of years is that of EDI - Electronic Data Interchange.
EDI has, to date, been mostly reserved for use by large enterprises that have a great deal of development money to throw at it. Which is fairly natural for what is a relatively new technology. The unfortunate result is that this has largely limited use to large/rich companies. Which isn't intrinsically evil, but is unfortunate for small- and mid-sized organizations that could benefit from electronic commerce.
Then came the web...
Current web-based commerce applications tend to involve highly customized catalog/"shopping basket" systems. A critical problem is that these applications are almost always highly non-interoperable. That is, they tend to involve custom CGI (and indeed, occasionally Java ) subsystems that lock the customer not only into having to use the individual vendors' "methods" for building orders, but also in effect force the use of particular browser software, and discourage/prevent the use of catalog information in new and different ways.
It would be highly desirable for there to be a "somewhat standardized" method of accessing data. The ANSI X12 standards for EDI certainly represent a standardized format. Linux-based software that could turn relatively simple web page requests into X12 EDI transactions would be of tremendous value in encouraging interoperability of web-based software with "enterprise software." It would use EDI data formats, and provide a "poor man's EDI interface." Quite the improvement from the current situation where most EDI implementations require expensive software, hardware, and design work.
One good thing for interoperability at the transport level is that there is a trend towards the use of SSL to send encrypted EDI data across the Internet. It's easy to get SSL-based software for Linux, which means it can certainly "talk the talk."
Documentation of new EDI standards that use XML as the data format.
Presents various accounting-related XML links, and a DTD for the transfer of general ledger accounting information.
The first folks to "grab" the obvious EDI-related domain name are a company that sells an MS-DOS-based EDI product particularly directed towards participation in sales to the United States Government, which has mandated the use of EDI by vendors.
However much I may despise the lack of overall product quality amongst the group of Microsoft operating systems, this is probably a pretty good sort of product to have around. It looks like the product allows small companies and folks that are neither technically advanced nor flush with money for expen$ive computer$ to participate in EDI.
And nothing says you can't run the product atop Caldera's OPEN-DOS...
Linux: It's Not Microsoft - TEXAS LAWYER, April 24, 2000