On Tue, 2010-03-23 at 15:30 -0700, Alex Viskovatoff wrote:
> > 2) Solaris 10 license are changed such that you can no longer use for
> more than 90 days evaluation w/o "Entitlement". Again, w/o any advance
> notice.
>
> > 3) New Entitlements are now only available with purchase of SPARC
> hardware.
>
> I had a look at the licensing information that there is a link to on the
> following page:
> http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp#expandkit
>
> That information ends as follows:
>
> > Solaris 10 Registration Process for Non-Download Customers
> > If you obtained Solaris 10 by means other than a download or are installing
> > Solaris 10 on systems that have not yet been registered, you must still
> > register to receive an Entitlement Document that gives you the right to use
> > the software past the 90-day evaluation period and for commercial purposes.
>
> So being limited to a 90-day evaluation period appears to apply only if you
> obtained Solaris 10 by downloading it. On the same page, there is a link to
> Buy the Solaris 10 10/09 DVD Media Kit. That kid costs $30.00.
>
> Of course, you don't get support that way, but "home hobbyists" were unlikely
> to buy support anyway, and it seems that they can remain legal past 90 days
> by just shelling out $30.00.
>
> Solaris 10 is comparable to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I don't know how the
> two compare in terms of pricing and policies on free security updates etc.
> One difference between the two is that since Solaris is not released under
> the GPU, Oracle/Sun is not obliged to release the Solaris equivalent of
> source RPMs. Thus, there is not the possibility of an option equivalent to
> CentOS emerging in the case of Solaris.
>
> So the title of this thread is misleading. Yes, Solaris 10 is no longer free,
> but it hasn't become prohibitively expensive, either.
Suggest you read a little more thoroughly:
"In order to use the Solaris operating system for perpetual commercial
use, each system running Solaris must be expressly licensed to do so. An
Entitlement Document comprises such license and is delivered to you
either with a new Sun system or from Sun Services as part of your
service agreement."
Pay particular attention to those last two words. Now go price service
agreements. Entry level service agreements are now on the order of
$1,000.00/yr. Who in their right mind would want to run a system w/o
the previously free security patches? So, yes, it has become
prohibitively expensive.
But that's not all... Assume $1k/yr/machine is of no consequence to you
and you try to actually purchase a service agreement for non Sun branded
hardware. Ah... a patched Solaris 10 just became _impossible_. But
then that was obviously the objective.
In other news, FreeBSD-7.3-RELEASE timing seems ironically apropos:
"The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability
of FreeBSD 7.3-RELEASE. This is the fourth release from the 7-STABLE branch
which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 7.2 and introduces a few
new features. There will be one more release from this branch to allow
future improvements to be made available in the 7-STABLE branch but at this
point most developers are focused on 8-STABLE.
Some of the highlights:
- ZFS updated to version 13
- new boot loader gptzfsboot supports GPT and ZFS
- hwpmc(4) enhancements including support for core2/i7 processor
and pmcannotate(8)
- new mfiutil and mptutil tools for widely used RAID controllers
- NULL pointer vulnerability mitigation
- bind updated to 9.4-ESV
- Gnome updated to 2.28.2
- KDE updated to 4.3.5
- Perl updated to 5.10
For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the
online release notes and errata list, available at:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/7.3R/relnotes.html
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/7.3R/errata.html";
--
Ken Gunderson <kgund...@teamcool.net>
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