On 12/02/2010 16:00, Ken Gunderson wrote:
On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 10:05 -0500, Dennis Clarke wrote:
OpenSolaris/Solaris friends :
This ( see below ) is from a thread on the PCA patch tool maillist this
morning. I made a few replies to Martin and there may be some upset by
Sun/Oracle customers over this silent change.
I'm fine with a fee. It would be nice if paying customers had known that
their new contracts were about to be terminated. Certainly people such as
myself that purchase support in January of each year.
You can see the text below and hopefully this is a transition phase issue.
If anyone knows, it would be nice if some light were shed on the topic.
Dennis
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [pca] No more free patches
From: "Dennis Clarke"<[email protected]>
Date: Fri, February 12, 2010 10:01
To: "PCA (Patch Check Advanced) Discussion"<[email protected]>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi,
Get ready for some bad news: According to my sources there will be no
more free access to any Solaris patch, be it security or not. A support
contract will be required for every patch download, no matter whether
it's done interactively through the website or hands-off with wget/pca.
I've been told that this policy change won't by publically announced by
Oracle, but it's described in this SunSolve document:
#203648: Software Update Entitlement Policy for Solaris
http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-61-203648-1
It already seems to be in effect. I tried to download various recent
security patches and access is denied to any of them.
Sooner or later access to patchdiag.xref and all other content currently
on SunSolve will be limited to paying customers as well.
No opinion, but a few thoughts:
Using an operating system where the only way to fix security problems is
waiting for the next version is a no-go, so the minimum cost for running
Solaris on a real-world system is now that of a basic service plan (324$
and up per year).
I am fine with a support contract fee on my servers. That is just business
and everyone would expect a small fee for service.
Software is free. Service is not.
"Software is Free, Service is Not: The Dawn of Service Networks" written
by ex-Oracle executives and co-founders of OpenWater - Mike Rocha and Tim
Chou.
See
http://www.anshublog.com/2007/05/new-meme-software-is-free-service-is.html
I have that book and I agree with its basic premise. Simply put, no
organization can support an operating system, application stack or any
software product for free. Period.
Sun didn't make enough money, so it's obvious that Oracle handles things
differently. Whether this is a wise decision is left to the future. The
fact that there's no public announcement reveals a lot.
That bothers me. Given that I bought new contracts within the last 30 days.
There should be a much simpler way to get basic patch support (think
about a PayPal button at the end of the OS installation to get the
idea). And it definitely should cost less than the service plans.
Personally, I'd prefer a one-time fee for the OS (which should be
included in the price of a server when bought from Sun).
That would be retrograde motion back to the days of the RTU license fee on
the Sparc servers. I doubt you can do such a thing with x86 servers or
machines based on a free download.
This will be the undoing of Solaris. One reason Sun got into such bad
shape was because they were far, far to late in accepting the reality of
the _competition_ from the FOSS world. CompSCI majors were using either
MS because of it's ubiquity or Linux because of it's technical
superiority and free availability. Hence, Solaris slipped slowly but
surely into irrelevance in all but the financial services sector. I
know CompSCI grads from the local U, for example, that had never even
_heard_ of Sun Microsystems, before I pointed them to Open/Solaris.
Open sourcing Solaris and making Solaris 10 freely available was
starting to change this. But it happened too slowly and meanwhile the
economy crashed, Sun got swallowed by Oracle, and now Solaris as an
option for users who cannot afford expensive maintenance contracts just
to get security updates is history. You think $350 a years is cheap?
Ask small businesses hammered by the economic meltdown about their bail
out checks. Ask people living in places like S. Africa.
Moreover, not providing free Security patches is pure stupidity. Watch
the increase in Solaris incursion reports sky rocket over coming months
at the security sites in coming months. Solaris's reputation will be
severely tarnished.
But then I guess such was to be expected from a bunch of greedy
bastards.
I'm just speculating but it might be that it will aply only to Solaris
releases and not Open Solaris, something like what RedHat does. At least
I hope it will be the case.
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