Just FYI, flame wars please >/dev/null
http://www.cuddletech.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=1120
Solaris No Longer Free
28 Mar ''10 - 10:14 by benr
Hot on the heals of Oracle''s revamp of Solaris support, the licensing
agreement for free downloads of Solaris 10 have changed. Infoworld broke the
news on Friday.
Here is the bit in question. Notice this paragraph in the Licensing Agreement:
"Obtaining an Entitlement Document is simple. On the Solaris 10 Get It
page, select the platform and format you desire from the drop-down menus, and
then click the Download Solaris 10 button. When you arrive at the Sun Download
Center, either sign in or register, ensuring that a valid e-mail address is part
of your Sun Download Center account to receive the Entitlement Document. Fill
out the Solaris download survey, specifying the number of systems on which you
are installing the software. Once you have completed the survey, you will be
redirected to the Solaris 10 download page for downloading, and your Entitlement
Document will be sent to your registered e-mail address. Please remember, your
right to use Solaris acquired as a download is limited to a trial of 90 days,
unless you acquire a service contract for the downloaded Software."
That''s the part that is that gets the interest... but here''s
the part that is more serious. Here is a line from the old license:
"In order to use the Solaris 10 Operating System for perpetual commercial
use, each system running the Solaris 10 OS must have an entitlement to do so.
The Entitlement Document is delivered to you either with a new Sun system, from
Sun Services as part of your service agreement, or via e-mail when you register
your systems through the Sun Download Center."
Notice the end of the line, "or via email when you register your systems
through the SDC". Look at those 2 sentences in the new document:
"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."
Notice something missing? Now the only entitlement docs come from a new
"Sun System" or a service contract. This is the basis for the
aforementioned "Please remember..."
Under the old agreement Solaris was only a 90 day trial if you failed to
register... however, now its a 90 day trial only if you register. An important
question to be answered is: What about agreements with other equipment makers
such as HP and Dell? Previously those agreements didn''t really matter
much outside of marketing because you could buy a Supermicro and register it for
an entitlement... but now?
So far the OpenSolaris license has not changed, it''s still CDDL.
So long as OpenSolaris remains free this isn''t the end of the world...
but now all eyes turn to OpenSolaris''s fate. The end of the month is
here and OpenSolaris 2010.03 is no where in site and those I''ve asked
on the inside are unable to say.
This might be a good time to catch up on non-Sun/Oracle distros such as Nexenta,
Schillix, and Belenix.
When combined with the support revamp and the impending Solaris 11 based on IPS,
the message seems clear. Out with the old, in with the new. There may be
attractive offerings for new customers in the high-end enterprise space, but
long time supporters in smaller shops are going to get royally screwed.
- - C O M M E N T S - -
Sounds pretty bad. Oracle might try to marginalize OpenSolaris and present it as
a mere toy for experiments, not fitting for usage in production. So it?s will be
up to community to change that and ensure that it will be a high quality product
fitting serious tasks. Only if Oracle will not try to thwart that.
shmerl - 28 March ''10 - 23:20
Pretty sure the license small type changed well before the tech journos ever
broke the news on it, but whatever. Still hugely shortsighted though.
Spent yesterday giving FreeBSD a spin.
:/
Dave - 28 March ''10 - 23:41
Also, how does this apply to NON-commercial use (e.g., the hobbyist segment)?
Bill Bradford (Email) (URL) - 29 March ''10 - 02:19
Another good question Bill. Maybe I should write yet another Open Letter? I?ll
start a series on the blog. :)
btw, my ?Open Letter to Oracle? got absolutely no reaction. No one contacted me,
nothing. I know people at Sun saw it, especially thanks to the Register article,
but no response.
benr - 29 March ''10 - 02:30
Ben, please do.
I?m genuinely curious to know how folk wanting to learn HP-UX or AIX for example
get a start in learning the ropes with a view to finding employment using those
systems, given that those OSs are not anything approaching readily available nor
I imagine affordable, and now that Solaris has ended up in a similar boat.
Surely it would be in Oracle?s best possible interest to foster hobbyist or
casual non-commercial use or tinkering where possible.
Yes, we still have OpenSolaris, and yes I have a Sun X2100M2 and V240 to
complete my SCSA on?but still!
Dave - 29 March ''10 - 05:00
Dave, I know what you mean. I actually had a five year plan for once but now
Oracle has gone and screwed that up. Do you think this change and its effects
would be worth a rethink of career path? If so were would you refocus? AIX, HP,
maybe a BSD or even linux distro?
RJSmyth (Email) - 29 March ''10 - 05:42
WTKF?
Zenadix - 29 March ''10 - 06:41
couple of mentions on BSD here, I feel the same way? bsd has dtrace & zfs,
but how about performance vs solaris- anybody mind to comment?
also I have investigated zfs on BSD and I do not think it is as solid as on
solaris, maybe there will now be more cross development.
phil (Email) - 29 March ''10 - 09:00
Could anyone suggest a single reason that Oracle would actually want to support
Solaris? They?ve been a Linux shop for years.
The only two reasons anyone would choose to use Solaris over Linux were dtrace
and ZFS. Nobody outside of Sun ever actually used dtrace, and ZFS is about to be
beaten into ground by btrfs.
I think it?s fairly safe to say: Solaris is dead. I await Netcraft?s
confirmation of same.
Jim (Email) - 29 March ''10 - 09:43
use upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server version instead.
I dont trust Oracle, no one should do. i hope they dont mess around
Java/JavaFX/Glassfish/Netbeans.
jeremy (Email) - 29 March ''10 - 10:29
they posted it too early. 1st of April is in few days ?. ;p
spetznaz (Email) - 29 March ''10 - 10:49
Duh!
Btrfs is hype. It needs ten more years to arrive, based on current development
rate.
Duh (Email) - 29 March ''10 - 11:11
@Jim what are you talking about???
There is nothing pointing to a demise of Solaris anywhere, Oracle is
establishing a baseline from where to obtain more money from every Sun asset,
including Solaris.
I commented something similar on a previous post by Ben.or most is the
enterprise representation of Linux.
What now that they have Solaris? They FINALLY have control over it all. They can
offer Linux for small, low-end, x86 customers and they can offer their UNIX for
the high end.
And do notice that, high end? Even if Solaris scales from small systems to
hundreds of threads, Mr. Ellison clearly stated many times that Solaris belongs
to the high end. The whole point is to be able to sell something to anyone? and
to a point, MySQL also has it?s purpose here.
Oracle, unlike Sun, doesn?t care about Solaris market share or number of
downloads? they care about the support contracts they have and the money.
On the Dtrace/ZFS point, you say ?Nobody outside of Sun ever actually used
dtrace, and ZFS is about to be beaten into ground by btrfs.?... Which is
something I had not seen for quite a while now.
How do you explain then that Dtrace is part of Mac OS X?s Xcode?... ZFS and
Dtrace already come with FreeBSD?... what about the on going projects to port
ZFS to FUSE, Mac (native) and Linux (native.. disregarding licensing issues)?.
ZFS is used by many people, even if they don?t know it. Just ask the Nexenta
people. Sun?s (oops, Oracle?s) FISHworks is based on OpenSolaris
(ZFS/Dtrace/SMF/FMA) to offer all of those capabilities to the series 7000
storage.
In fact, what has pushed IBM, Cisco and, in it?s moment, Oracle to fund
SystemTap and BTRFS was to be able to compete against Solaris. And neither of
those are comparable to Dtrace or ZFS, not on features and not on stability.
Many of my clients are using those features, and Containers (which BTW, finds
almost no competition in the market), so please refrain from writing groundless
remarks about Solaris usage?
Just as OpenSolaris, Solaris is not going anywhere. So please, stop spreading
FUD.
@RJSmyth? If you are thinking about going to AIX or HP-UX, you might as well
stay with Solaris? otherwise, you would be jumping from the frying pan into the
fire.
@jeremy? I don?t even know how to comment on that, typical Ubuntu fanboy answer?
I would recommend you to read a bit about the differences between Solaris and
Ubuntu, then comment back.
@Ben, I hope you don?t get offended, but those open letters for me are useless?
they increase fear to Solaris users, but achieve nothing? and Oracle is under no
obligation to answer.
They are still planning what to do with Sun?s stuff, so they probably do not
even know how to answer yet? I think it?s best to keep waiting a bit more and
see what they do.
Phobos (Email) - 29 March ''10 - 11:21
@phobos
wow, I dont even understand as well why you should answer all the comments,
trust me I?m not a fanboy of anything. anyway, you should also talk to Larry to
read something about differences between Solaris and Ubuntu, he still thinks
Oracle?s unbrea? linux is greater than solaris.
jeremy (Email) - 29 March ''10 - 12:03
Jeremy, sorry, but I believe you are misinformed.
Larry (and the whole Oracle crew) has stated that the future of high-end will be
Solaris. Read the transcript of his webcasts, or watch them in full. You can
find some of Larry?s remarks such as:
?I think Solaris is way far advanced, and I love Linux, but I think Solaris is a
more capable operating system,?
?I think Solaris? home is in the high-end of the data center, and it will be a
long time before Linux catches up?
?But again we will have Linux?I?m a Linux fan and if you want Linux we have the
best Linux in the world. If you want UNIX, we have the best UNIX in the world.
And again, they are different and I don?t think the high end is in trouble at
all.?
As you can see, they are positioning Solaris first (high-end), and if you want
Linux, well, they have that too.
Sorry, but Ubuntu doesn?t even comes close to Solaris in any way. It doesn?t
even directly compare to RHEL.
Once again, I invite you to read and research a bit before posting such
groundless comments.
Phobos (Email) - 29 March ''10 - 12:15
@Phobos
I am all for reading and researching and tapping the minds of knowledgeable folk
which your post seem to imply that you could belong to this group =). So I would
like to ask you your comments on the performance of FreeBSD vs Solaris.
kr
Phil
phil (Email) - 29 March ''10 - 12:46
Phil, my only comment is that your mileage may vary!.
Both Solaris and FreeBSD are good OSs for general use, but in order to know
which one suits you best, nothing beats a hands on experience. ZFS performance
on FreeBSD still has some details that needs to be addressed, but it already is
labeled as production ready.
Dtrace on FreeBSD also works great. I believe it doesn?t have all the probes
Solaris has yet, but it performs great anyways.
Personally, I would recommend you to test both systems. Maybe you will find some
comparative benchmarks in Phoronix, but those don?t guarantee your application
will work better on one or the other.
Hope that helps.
Phobos (Email) - 29 March ''10 - 13:12
--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
http://leitl.org
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