[rescue] Sun E6000 question

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Fri, 2 Aug 2002, Joshua D Boyd wrote:

> But did they say anything about not moving my old Solaris 8 license
> from my SS Classic to my E6k?

>From my understanding of the original agreement, you don't "move" the free
licenses.  Each new machine is relicensed, whether or not your old
machines are still running the same Solaris release.  However, if you're
using the media kit you already have, you'd already agreed to license
terms allowing you up to 8 CPUs, and they can't very-well change the terms
to which you agreed.

Let me qualify that statement, though.  For something like Solaris or a
compiler or other really fscking expensive piece of software[1], I don't
feel bad about using it unlicensed for personal purposes only.  However,
if I make money with it, I will buy a license as immediately as I can
afford it.  This is purely a morality call on my part, and not sound legal
advice.

My view is that if I get good at using $software at home, I can convince
companies to buy and use it, where I otherwise wouldn't be able to, and
this makes money for the vendor.  This is especially true for something
like Solaris.  I deal with Windows "servers" at pretty much every
consulting gig that I do these days.  Why Windows, and not a stable POSIX-
compliant OS running samba?  Because no one's shown them that a computer
-can- run for more than a day without a reboot--it has little or nothing
to do with their ability to admin Windows, since, they usually don't know
how!  I show them the stability gained from other operating systems and
swap out Windows for OpenBSD[2] or Solaris -all the time-.  I would think
that Sun would forgive my hypothetical use of an unlicensed copy of
Solaris 9 on my hypothetical E6500 that I keep in my hypothetical machine
room at home.

[1] Solaris counts, in my book.  An 8-CPU license is $6k, and anything
    above that is -OUCH-.  Things like games and word-processors, however,
    do not count, since they have a legitimate target market for home
    users.
[2] Ever seen Windows NT set up as a router?  Ewwwwwww.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke
   > Can you SysAdmins tell me what might go on in a typical day?
   Hours of endless frustration punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
                                 --Saul Tannenbaum (in the Monastery)