Hot on the heals of Oracle’s revamp of Solaris support, the licensing agreement for free downloads of Solaris 10 have changed. Infoworld broke the news on Friday.

Here is the bit in question. Notice this paragraph in the Licensing Agreement:

“Obtaining an Entitlement Document is simple. On the Solaris 10 Get It page, select the platform and format you desire from the drop-down menus, and then click the Download Solaris 10 button. When you arrive at the Sun Download Center, either sign in or register, ensuring that a valid e-mail address is part of your Sun Download Center account to receive the Entitlement Document. Fill out the Solaris download survey, specifying the number of systems on which you are installing the software. Once you have completed the survey, you will be redirected to the Solaris 10 download page for downloading, and your Entitlement Document will be sent to your registered e-mail address. Please remember, your right to use Solaris acquired as a download is limited to a trial of 90 days, unless you acquire a service contract for the downloaded Software.“

That’s the part that is that gets the interest… but here’s the part that is more serious. Here is a line from the old license:

“In order to use the Solaris 10 Operating System for perpetual commercial use, each system running the Solaris 10 OS must have an entitlement to do so. The Entitlement Document is delivered to you either with a new Sun system, from Sun Services as part of your service agreement, or via e-mail when you register your systems through the Sun Download Center.”

Notice the end of the line, “or via email when you register your systems through the SDC”. Look at those 2 sentences in the new document:

“In order to use the Solaris operating system for perpetual commercial use, each system running Solaris must be expressly licensed to do so. An Entitlement Document comprises such license and is delivered to you either with a new Sun system or from Sun Services as part of your service agreement.”

Notice something missing? Now the only entitlement docs come from a new “Sun System” or a service contract. This is the basis for the aforementioned “Please remember…”

Under the old agreement Solaris was only a 90 day trial if you failed to register… however, now its a 90 day trial only if you register. An important question to be answered is: What about agreements with other equipment makers such as HP and Dell? Previously those agreements didn’t really matter much outside of marketing because you could buy a Supermicro and register it for an entitlement… but now?

So far the OpenSolaris license has not changed, it’s still CDDL.

So long as OpenSolaris remains free this isn’t the end of the world… but now all eyes turn to OpenSolaris’s fate. The end of the month is here and OpenSolaris 2010.03 is no where in site and those I’ve asked on the inside are unable to say.

This might be a good time to catch up on non-Sun/Oracle distros such as Nexenta, Schillix, and Belenix.

When combined with the support revamp and the impending Solaris 11 based on IPS, the message seems clear. Out with the old, in with the new. There may be attractive offerings for new customers in the high-end enterprise space, but long time supporters in smaller shops are going to get royally screwed.

We’re getting more of a taste as to the “new reality”. Most of the news is of the “Surprised, but knew this was coming” variety.

Motley Fool has a good write-up about the Oracle earnings announcement and how Sun’s impacting the bottom line as well as changes coming. Some of the include getting rid of all unprofitable resale deals, such as Veritas and Hitachi products.

CIO Mag dips into the new “All or Nothing” support model being adopted. The policy (PDF) states: “when acquiring technical support, all hardware systems must be supported (e.g., Oracle Premier Support for Systems or Oracle Premier Support for Operating Systems) or unsupported.”

The policy goes on with all sorts of horrors, such as heavy penalties 90-days after contract lapse, including “your hardware system must be qualified as service-ready before technical support can be reinstated” and “The reinstatement fee is equal to 150% of the last-paid support fee, or 150% of the list technical support price for the covered hardware system, prorated from the date technical support is being ordered back to the date technical support lapsed”. Ouch.

So how do you offer a product for free and then ensure that people pony up the cash? This sounds like the way. I haven’t seen anything about OS support for non-Sun systems (Dell, HP, etc) but I would assume they would have to support at least some of them due to prior agreements over the last couple years.

I’m sure we’ll be learning even more very soon. One thing is clear, Solaris just got too expensive for the SMB. The low income customer base that Sun’s tried to build up over the last couple years is SOL.

Best lightsaber duel. ever.

Also… your desktop is getting old… Get some new wallpaper. If those don’t fit your style, try VladStudio.

root@quatro src$ uname -a
SunOS quatro 5.11 snv_133 i86pc i386 i86pc Solaris

root@quatro src$ pkg search gcc
Segmentation Fault (core dumped)
root@quatro src$ exit
exit
benr@quatro src$ pkg search gcc
Segmentation Fault
benr@quatro src$ pfexec pkg search gcc
INDEX           ACTION   VALUE               PACKAGE
description     set      GCC                 pkg:/SUNWgccruntime@3.4.3-0.97
description     set      GCC                 pkg:/developer/gcc/gcc-libgfortran@4.3.3-0.133
description     set      GCC                 pkg:/developer/gcc/gcc-libssp@4.3.3-0.133
description     set      GCC                 pkg:/developer/gcc/gcc-libgcc@4.3.3-0.133

Why does IPS still suck? Seriously, we can’t catch errors before segfaulting? And people wonder why I claim that IPS and AI are so immature. I just can’t wait for Oracle to cram this down my throat.

I want SX:CE back. Anybody in MPK17 listening!?!? Stop telling customers they are stupid for using post-install scripts, stop pontificating about how you know better. ZFS made claims to rightness and proved itself. IPS has yet to convince me…. its had years, and still has yet.

Update:

I’m getting email from folks asking about the underlying problem here. The issue is that Python freaks if you have alternate version installed an in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH or PYTHONPATH.

root@quatro ~$ pkg search virsh
Segmentation Fault (core dumped)
root@quatro ~$ unset PYTHONPATH
root@quatro ~$ pkg search virsh
Segmentation Fault (core dumped)
root@quatro ~$ unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH
root@quatro ~$ pkg search virsh
INDEX      ACTION   VALUE               PACKAGE
basename   file     usr/bin/amd64/virsh pkg:/SUNWlibvirt@0.5.11-0.128
basename   file     usr/bin/i86/virsh   pkg:/SUNWlibvirt@0.5.11-0.128

But that’s not the point I’m making… the point is that there isn’t a wrapper to catch these types of issues. IPS is a critical system utility and shouldn’t be derailed by something so simple. Its just immaturity.