> For those of us using Solaris in production, having > access to the source code, > coupled with DTrace, has made our lives much, much > easier. Punching down into > weird problems becomes possible without a lot of > blood and cargo culting. > > It's nice that you're happy using Solaris for free (I > pay for my support > contracts), but having such an incredibly useful > resource for Getting Work Done > pulled or just hamstrung, is pretty painful. > > I say hamstrung as source drops will still occur > after releases, in theory; > previously dropped source should, hopefully, continue > to be accessible. And for > my Enterprisey customers, that will almost certainly > be good enough. > > There are also several large orangizations who > require bleeding edge in their > production. Having access to the latest source for > not only finding and > reporting problems, but submitting patches back > upstream, was really helpful. > > I also paid my OS X licenses, both at home and at > work. But I'm not using OS X > for anything one might consider five nines, whereas > Solaris...
I absolutely understand your position. If lack of, or insufficient access to source code is a deal breaker for a good number of paying customers, then Oracle will have to address that issue. This thread was about the new OTN license covering Solaris 10 and Solaris Express. If Oracle is going to allow people to use their software for free, that's a good thing, even if it might not be as "good" as what Sun gave away for free. I am really shocked that there are people complaining about this. There was some guy on another thread asking if Oracle was going to provide him with tech support for Solaris Express for free! If you're a paying customer and don't feel like you're getting the level of support you paid good money for, by all means, complain about it. If you're using something that someone is letting you use at absolutely no cost (i.e. a freeloader like me), whether it's in a production environment or not, you have no room for complaint. I don't think Oracle wants to lose customers, they just want to make a profit on the billions they invested in buying Sun. I think that the decision to kill OpenSolaris, and offer Solaris Express under a different license, was made mostly to prevent people from using their software (and source code) to make money without paying them. The decision to still offer a free, uncrippled version of Solaris for educational/home use is a very kind gesture in my book, regardless of whether or not it was done for strictly business reasons (as I'm sure it was). I hope Oracle addresses your issues. Perhaps some future license will give you the tools you need to more effectively do your job at a fair cost. I'm sorry, I'm just blown away that Oracle is offering free personal use of their enterprise operating system, and there are people suggesting they should get source code, patches, and tech support for free as well... eric -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
