[rescue] Oracle Solaris may not be "free as in beer" going forward

[Andrew Gaylard]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 2:37 PM, Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Story here: http://www.katonda.com/news/solaries-no-more-free-open-solaris-may-die/936/2010
>
> Open Solaris is being drained of resources, Oracle Solaris will have a
> 90 day free trial, then you will have to pay for the OS (similar to
> what MS does with Win 7/Server 2008). Future enhancements may be
> retained for "paying" customers, akin to how some MySQL developments
> are witheld from the free software base.
>
> Figured folks here would be interested, I haven't seen any posts on
> this (yet), so I thought I'd share...

Yeah, this has been brewing for a while now.  See

http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/opensolaris-discuss/2010-March/054978.html

for some angry responses.  For a more balanced view, see

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/6453-A-tempest-in-a-teapot-or-The-reactions-to-the-Oracle-support-policy-document.html

My own opinions are:

(a) Sun needs to make money from licenses and support;
(b) hobbyists like us are valuable contributors, in terms of
    - testing,
    - bug-reports, and
    - convincing their friends and employers to use Sun HW and Solaris.

So Oracle needs to find a way to achieve the former without alienating
the latter.  I hope they think this through more carefully.


- Andrew