Oracle/Sun Enforces Pay-For-Security-Updates Plan

An anonymous reader writes "Recently, the Oracle/Sun conglomerate has denied public download access to all service packs for Solaris unless you have a support contract. Now, paying a premium for gold-class service is nothing new in the industry, but withholding critical security updates smacks of extortion. While this pay-for-play model may be de rigueur for enterprise database systems, it is certainly not the norm for OS manufactures. What may be more interesting is how Oracle/Sun is able to sidestep GNU licensing requirements since several of the Solaris cluster packs contain patches to GNU utilities and applications."

Comments

Re:The licensed the software,

[BitZtream]

You do realize GPL is a software license right?

Ignorant fanboy.

Linux

[pak9rabid]

This is one of many reasons why I run GNU/Linux...

Re:Just like Redhat

[BitZtream]

Most certainly can jump on Oracle! Redhate is friend of GPL. Oracle is commercial company who doesn't give everything away for free.

Oracle is evil because they don't want to give everyone a free ride. Redhat is good because ... well, because GPL and Linux fan boys are generally fucking retarded, I can't come up with any other reason people are salivating to give them blowjobs.

The reality of it is, Oracle is just putting the nails in the Solaris coffin without actually saying thats what they are doing.

Yes, Oracle is cutting lots of 'free' as in money things out of Sun ... in case you didn't notice Sun wasn't going to survive for long the way it was going, if Oracle doesn't do something to stem the flow of cash out of Sun then Oracle will simply be next. While I'm sure there are plenty of idiots here who think that would be a good thing, you'd be wrong for a number of reasons.

Of course, the only way this is acceptable to me is if they start releasing versions of Solaris that they put the time and effort into testing and securing before release. The worlds current software development model is 'sell the customer a beta app, patch it over time, and when its finally at a 'release ready' point you EOL it, release the NEXT beta version of the software and get everyone to upgrade!'

If they continue to sell incomplete/untested software and then start charging you to finish the beta program well, they'll get by with it for a while, but it'll just be known as the start of the final nail in the solaris coffin.