Look, this is a TECHNICAL list. We (those of us still working at
Oracle) can't answer these questions. Literally.
By that I mean we're technical folks, either directly involved in
coding, or advanced users. And that applies to a large number of
non-Oracle folks on this list, too.
You want Sales, Marketing, and PR answers. We can't give them to you.
Not "won't give", CAN'T GIVE. We don't know. And even if we did, we
would be out of place to speak about them, since none of us are
authorized to speak as official spokesmen.
Please, for the umteenth time now, ask a Sales Rep. That's right - call
them up, and ask them what the story is. They can tell you. We can't.
-Erik
Alex Viskovatoff wrote:
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.
--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop: usca22-123
Phone: x17195
Santa Clara, CA
Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)
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