I don't think evaporating non-contract security patch releases is especially best practice. Note I'm only making reference to security patches. Other types of patches are really a completely separate issue than this in some respects.
It's a fairly simple argument to make that this is a vendor responsibility issue, rather than one of user rights. The fact is the arguments in favor of open security patching, both historical and otherwise, suggest themselves to nearly no end. I'm troubled by this. I'm not trying to spread FUD. I've got no desire to hunt down someplace different to say it either, in part because I don't want to fan flames & in part because this is where I edutated myself about the issue(s). On the other hand, that issue just doesn't exist for OpenSolaris. It would be nice if there was still a support option for non-Sun x86 systems & OpenSolaris but that' only hurts how well I can sell it into an enterprise, not me personally. I didn't think having the piles of media kits for Solaris 10 (both cpu flavors) was ever going to make a difference with anything. Now I find myself glad I have them. Overall I'm kind of in the camp of waiting to see how some of these things will sort out. I don't expect the ride not to have some bumps, but then I don't have to worry about the outcomes of this issue personally. My personal expectation is that buying Sun will be better for Oracle than it would have been if Sun bought Oracle in some alternate universe... I expect it will be a situation that causes Oracle to change as a company a great deal more than they might have expected. So while I'm willing to potentially flag a policy issue that has some technical merit to the OpenSolaris community, at the same time I'd encourage people not to lose sight of the weight of convergent interests that exist with all the involved parties. Tim -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
