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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."
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
The GPL doesn't prevent you from charging a fee for GNU software. It just stops you from preventing the people you sell it to from distributing it to everyone else. OpenSolaris is free and the source is available. If you are using Solaris (not OpenSolaris) then you are paying for a platform that has undergone some extra testing and comes with support guarantees. If this isn't important to you, then use OpenSolaris for free.
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They're not sidestepping anything GPL-wise. The OS patches contain some GPL binaries and some proprietary binaries. They are side by side, which means the proprietary binaries are not subject to the GPL. The entire patch package, therefor, can't be redistributed. The GPL bits within the patch can be freely redistributed. As can the source for those bits, which Sun/Oracle is (presumably) making available as they always have to comply with the GPL.
So, they are sidestepping nothing.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
It's just a bunch of crying over nothing. Boo hoo I'm entitled and want everything MY way and if you don't give me my way then I'll use big words like EXTORTION.
If people don't like it then they don't have to use Solaris, plain and simple.
I don't want to sound negative, but I was always worried about Oracle buying Sun, for how it would impact negatively on Sun's business. For me the Oracle web site is so convoluted that it stinks of 'we designed this so that you to pay use to find it'. Everything feels designed to nickle and dime everything you try doing with them. This is based on experience of having get specific updates to fix certain known issues. If you don't agree with my perspective, I would gladly appreciate hearing about your experience.
I am a Java developer and I hope that they don't extend this to Java or any other Sun technologies with a more 'open' culture.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Oracle is redistributing the works of others... just as if they were passing around copies of msoffice.
Now of course something like that comes with legal complications.
Merely claiming that this is another case of "entitlement mentality" is dishonest and *ssinine.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Presumably if you obtained the GPL binaries/source from SUN, its legal to redistribute those patches. But there is nothing in the GPL requiring SUN to give you those patches, code or binaries.
If they give you the binaries, they need to give you the source. But if they choose not to give you the binaries (i.e. you elect not to pay for a Solaris contract), they are not obligated to give you anything (binaries or source)
Actually, that brings up a point. Since this is about security flaws in their distribution, wouldn't this make them liable if something happened to your sever? "They gave me faulty software which THEY KNEW WAS FAULTY because they wanted to charge me $xx to get the fix"...? This isn't about feature updates (which they could justify charging for), it's about flaws in what they gave out... Now sure, you could say that the flaws were outside of their control because they came from upstream. But if that was the case, how in the world could they justify charging for those updates as not being extortion?...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
The part that says(slightly paraphrased for clarity) "this disclaimer may not be valid in some states and does not prevent you from exercising your rights, but hopefully confuses you enough that you don't realize you have any"
A contract to perform an illegal act is not a valid contract... Considering here the threat is that you can be attacked through the vulnerabilities that were provided in the original software package, I think the argument could be made that this is extortion. And if it is extortion, then they would become responsible for any damages occurring because of the extortion. So even though they disclaimed liability, they could still be held liable (If it is found to be extortion). The disclaimer of liability can been thrown out in cases of criminal negligence (If they installed a back door on your server and then exploited it, they would be liable for the damages regardless of what was in the license)... So it really doesn't matter in this particular case if you agreed to their terms or not so long as a court would agree that this is extortion...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
So it really doesn't matter in this particular case if you agreed to their terms or not so long as a court would agree that this is extortion...
Which is highly unlikely and I doubt you have a shred of case law to back up any claim to the contrary.
All security updates should be free as in beer. Patches that include features are for-pay. It's not my fault they released a product with security holes. I love car analogies, and it works pretty good here.
This goes back to the story of the Scorpion and the Frog. A scorpion was travelling across the land when he came to a river. Wanting to get across, he approached a frog to help him get across.
The frog replied "Why should I help you across because you will sting me and we will both drown."
The scorpion said "I promise not to sting you."
They are half-way across the river then the scorpion is startled by a splash of water and stings the frog. The frog cries out as his body begins to paralyze "Fool! You have doomed us both as I predicted."
The scorpion replies "Fool? What did you expect Frog? I am a scorpion."
Oracle is a Scorpion. Anyone who thought otherwise when they purchased SUN is a fool.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
I'm having trouble seeing what the big deal is here.
Oracle is building a successful business around open source software in the full spirit of the GPL. They must be destroyed at all costs .. oh, wait.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
So that's a no on having any relevant statutory or case law to back up the claim that they could be successfully sued for extortion? Yeah, I thought so.
Yes, that was certainly the plan a year ago.
It's no longer the plan. You'll soon need to flip it around.
Solaris is now a great tool to help Oracle force people to one and only one vendor (Oracle) for just about everything. That's the new plan. And Linux fits in that plan right now, but probably won't in a few years, if they can get people to trust them as hardware vendors, and they can keep the quality of Solaris testing up.
Oracle sees Sun as a company with a LOT of great stuff, but both weak and incompetent, since it didn't squeeze cash out of people on every single thing it did. Oracle is right now in an orgasmic frenzy to take everything Sun had and monetize it -- some at the start, though that's less important, but EVERYTHING must bring in cash via support and updates. Furthermore, expect to see every piece slowly being changed slightly to push you towards coupling with other Oracle tools.
Which is why open systems, like Linux, don't help Oracle in the long run. Open systems give you flexibility, and flexibility is bad. Oracle is pushing to get the whole enterprise, from soup to nuts. In the words of an IBM rep I was talking to about this: "We tried that 15 years ago, and it almost killed the company."
Oracle started doing Linux not because they like open systems (they don't), but because A. they could control it a little through their own distro and B. they could get the support contracts, instead of the money going to Red Hat. Now they have Solaris. They'll push that like crazy and move people onto it, since they can certainly control it a lot better than they can control Linux, and instead of some of the support dollars going to Oracle, ALL of the support dollars will go to them.
No. But if I bought a lock that claimed to be secure, and a few months down the line someone figured out that you could unlock it by simply putting a paperclip in the end, I would expect them to give me a new lock. I expect a reasonable level of security, and I expect a reasonable length of support for that security. If they told me 1 month after purchase that they weren't going to fix security issues, I'd be flabbergasted. If there was a critical zero day vulnerability found, I expect it fixed yesterday (In understand that in reality it takes time, but I expect the fix in a reasonable amount of time, not years). And since it was a fundamental flaw in the original design, I either way the fix for free, or a free upgrade to software that doesn't contain the fundamental flaw. Just because they get away with it doesn't make it right...
When I purchase a product, I expect that product to work. When I pay for support, I pay so that I have someone to call if something goes wrong. I don't pay support so that the company can offset its costs from the purchase price. So the money they spend on security should come from the purchase price (after all, security is a subset of development rather than a subset of support), not the service contract.
I agree 110%...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
This is the most absurd piece of news I've come across this year! Why on earth should I pay to have Oracle/Sun fix their own bugs?
Obviously Security flaws are bugs. If any security vulnerabilities are identified, they should be ethically and morally obligated (ie assuming that the legal angle is unenforceable) to fix these and distribute the patches for free.
Isn't there anything called accountability/responsibility left any more?!? We are a huge Sun shop and one of the reasons we loved Sun so much is the fact that it was not a blood-sucker when it came to things like patches, software, etc. Unlike a company like HP, who charged for everything from multipathing software to UNIX resource mgt tools (which should be defacto standard of any mature OS).
Oracle/Sun -
If you're reading this, this is a monumentally stupid idea from a brand management perspective.
Do you really want to be the vendor known for cracked boxes?
When the incident reports go up and "OS: Solaris" is moving to the top, I know what most execs would say.
It won't be "we should pay more for support", it'll be "switch operating systems".