Before anyone says that the place to discuss this is the Oracle forums, with 
some difficulty, I found 
[url=http://forums.sun.com/forum.jspa?forumID=844&start=0]the appropriate 
forum[/url]. But it seems to be much less active than the OpenSolaris forums. 
There is [url=http://forums.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5434104]a new 
thread[/url] there on this subject, with one reply that just asks another 
question. Here is the first post from that thread:

> Solaris subscriptions
> Mar 31, 2010 9:02 AM
>
> Does anyone know what the latest cost for a Solaris 10 subscription is? 
> Oracle no longer has the prices on the web, or at least it is completely 
> impossible to find. They want to force people to call them and I don't care 
> to waste any more time looking nor answering a hundred questions and 
> navigating fifty phone menus in order to speak with someone to ask a basic 
> question. If this is Oracle's new answer to customer support, it is sorely 
> lacking.

The official Web page 
[url=http://www.oracle.com/us/support/systems/operating-systems/index.html]Oracle
 Premier Support for Operating Systems[/url] clearly states that paid support 
of Solaris 10 is available that is not tied to hardware. However, as the post 
above notes, "Oracle no longer has the prices on the web". Why is that?

To see if I could find them, I went to the Oracle online store. I was able to 
find this page there: 
[url=https://shop.oracle.com/pls/ostore/f?p=ostore:2:0::NO:RP,2:PROD_HIER_ID:4510271054261805728467]Product
 Category - Infrastructure[/url]. This has five different levels of Linux 
support listed, along with the corresponding prices: Enterprise Linux Basic 
Limited Support, Enterprise Linux Basic Support, Enterprise Linux Network 
Support, Enterprise Linux Premier Limited Support, Enterprise Linux Premier 
Support. Judging by their names, the last two are the Linux equivalents of the 
support that Oracle claims it provides for Solaris 10.

If Oracle can list the prices for its Linux support there, why can't it list 
the prices for its Solaris 10 support?

I initially believed what others have said that the lack of precise  
information from Oracle about support for Solaris 10 is due to the chaos of 
corporate reorganization. But this has now dragged on long enough for things to 
definitely look fishy.

The thread 
[url=http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=126336&tstart=0]Solaris 
10 - no longer free[/url] from this forum was started on March 12. Incredibly, 
tomorrow that will be three weeks ago. No official information about Solaris 10 
support has come out of Oracle since then.

One explanation for this state of affairs is incompetence. But Oracle is a 
highly successful corporation, with sales of $6.2 billion in 2004, the market 
share leader in its main market, relational databases. Therefore, it is 
difficult to avoid the suspicion that something more sinister than mere 
incompetence lies at the bottom of this silence.

There is an official Sun Wiki called 
[url=http://wikis.sun.com/display/SunSolve/How+Entitlement+Works?focusedCommentId=199106721#comment-199106721]How
 Entitlement Works[/url]. Here is part of the last post there, dated March 23:

> I can't seem to purchase a support contract. The only page that even lists 
> the ability to purchase it is broken (see dpfloyd's comment), and I have not 
> receved a call back from Oracle/Sun sales in nearly a week (and that was 
> after getting bounced through 6 different people to a support person who at 
> least knew to forward my info to a Sun-related salesperson, or so they said). 
> Additionally, if you click the "How to Purchase a Contract" it provides no 
> actual info on how to do that

The post above is not in fact the last post that was made on that Wiki. There 
was a reply to that post by a Sun employee, dated the same day:

> Miriam_at_Sun says:
>
> Hello,
> I am investigating this and will update my reply when I have the answer.
> Miriam

Why, after more than a week, has this Sun employee not been able to obtain the 
answer? And, perhaps more to the point, why was her reply deleted? Why is 
Oracle vandalizing its own Web sites to prevent people from having accurate 
knowledge of public communications made between Oracle employees and its 
customers?

Again, lest it be objected that discussion of Solaris 10 does not belong here: 
In recent development releases of OpenSolaris, it is possible to run Solaris 10 
in an OpenSolaris branded zone. Therefore, the BrandZ technology makes Solaris 
10 licensing issues of potential interest to all OpenSolaris users.
-- 
This message posted from opensolaris.org
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
[email protected]

Reply via email to