[OT] Solaris Sparc License (was: Fedora on SUN Ultra sparc10)

[T. Ribbrock]

On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 08:13:30AM -0400, Luc Bouchard wrote:
> Rodolfo J. Paiz said:
> > At 19:08 5/10/2004, leam wrote:
> >>Um, Solaris is free for <8 CPU machines. At least that's what they told us.

> > You can download the software at no cost. However, the license to use it is
> > *only* free if you acquired your Sun machine from them or an authorized
> > distributor. If you buy a U10 on Ebay from me, you have to pay for the
> > license to use the software.

> The license is free to use for Development or Educational use on a
> single CPU machine.  You must register the license as part of the
> download.

Yeah, but it's a grey area whether the "development machine" has to be
acquired from Sun or an authorized dealer. Sun's website isn't 100%
clear on that and IANAL, so I don't intend to deal with this mess.

The complete paragraph on Sun's pages
(http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/binaries/index.html) is as follows:

<quote>
Developers and Educational Users - Get started with the Free Solaris[sm]
Binary License Program today!

Now you can use the Solaris 9 Operating System at home or at work --
without paying a license fee. Download the Solaris 9 OS today - FREE or
purchase a media kit. You can use the software for non-commercial usage
on single processor systems supplied to you by Sun or its authorized
distributors or based on the x86 architecture.
</quote>

Note the last sentence.

The *safe* choice therefore is Linux or one of the BSDs[0] if you want to
use the box legally and without additional cost.

Cheerio,

Thomas

[0] OpenBSD/NetBSD in any case, not sure about FreeBSD
-- 
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                Thomas Ribbrock    http://www.ribbrock.org 
  "You have to live on the edge of reality - to make your dreams come true!"