Re: SUMMARY: Solaris 2.2 licensing

From: Steve Hanson (hanson@pogo.fnal.gov)
Date: Mon Jun 21 1993 - 11:24:08 CDT


Well, I hate to pitch in my own two cents worth, but ---

A lot of people have been objecting to Sun charging essentially
"by the user". They've ALWAYS done this. You've ALWAYS
just gotten a 2 user license with the machine. It's just
basic UNIX licensing - you pay by the user. So please, can
we not object to Sun wanting more for a server license than for
a workstation license? It's just the way things have been.
It's how they will continue to be. And it's not out of line
with what most other vendors do.

I also don't really see any objection to what the licensing fees
are, or how they are basically applied. Of course, I would rather
not shell out the money, but --- well, that's how things often
are.

My only real objection here is to the way it has been done.
We have something like 200 machines here. A lot of them will,
under the new regime, require a license upgrade. My real objection
is that since the terms for what a "user" is have changed so drastically,
we have a lot of systems that suddenly require a license upgrade,
even though we haven't changed the way the machines are used at all.
I don't know that I think that aspect of things is fair or reasonable.

I dont' even mind so much that this applies to Solaris 2. But as I
read the announcement, it applies to SOlaris 1 as well. So
Sun kind of unilaterally changed the rules.

Now, we try to be legal. I even tried to buy upgrade licenses in the
past for some of our systems. Our sales people couldn't really figure
out how to sell us an upgrade, because in the old price list it was
clear that the license upgrades could only be bought when a system
was purchased.

Now they've gone from not even being able to sell you the upgrade
to insisting on it.

It's also a little difficult to decide what to do. Some of our
systems are basically just desktops. They really ought to be okay
with the desktop license. But - how do I make "sure" I'm legal?
Certainly, I can't keep that third person from logging in.
I keep hearing that Sun is going to enforce this in software in
the future. At least that would be consistent. As things stand
now they're making their customers play policeman, but not
giving them any tools to do so. Do I buy an unlimited license
for every machine on the off chance that a 3rd person will log in?

I guess my main objection to all of this is that it sort of came out
of the blue. Suddenly our machines need license upgrades that we
had no idea were coming. We just always thought a 2-user machine
could be an NFS server. Suddenly all the rules have changed.
It really makes one worry what the next thing will be -
perhaps a "per socket" license? A per disk drive license?

We've objected to our sales and support people, who seem kind of
bewildered by the whole thing - seems to have taken them by
surprise as well.

-- 
Steve Hanson - FERMILAB, Batavia, Il.
hanson@pogo.fnal.gov or hanson@fnal.fnal.gov



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