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

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @03:35AM from the you-get-what-you-pay-for dept.

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."

1 of 238 comments (clear)

Re:That's a nice server you got there by commodore64_love · 2010-03-23 04:31 · Score: 0, Troll

You may be right.
But I don't think so. Look at how Microsoft fixed Vista vulnerabilities and memory problems* - told users to go buy Windows 7 (NT/vista 6.1). I don't see anyone prevailing against MS so I doubt they'd succeed with Sun.
*
* Refuses to run properly on my brother's 512 megabyte machine, even with everything turned off. The bug-fixed Vista called "7" works okay.

--
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall