[Info-vax] : Welcome to lockdown - HP limiting access to patches

[Neil Rieck]

>
> BTW, Solaris has recently gone down this route as well. I wonder if that
> is where HP got this idea from.
>
> Simon.
>

It is funny you mentioned this because my employer owns hundreds of
Solaris boxes which need patches and/or upgrades. Many managers are
grumbling because Solaris used to be free but now the support fees
will come out of their own local budgets. What is really odd is why
people working for a large corporation would ever expect another large
corporation to continue doing something for free. We all knew that SUN
offered free software only to keep their hardware business alive (just
as IBM has a line of free software for the same reason although they
also have a line of not-free software) but free can only take you so
far. Perhaps SUN should have given away free 12-month Solaris support
with each new machine but then require a support contract after that.

On a related note, I wonder if recent actions taken by Oracle (owners
of SUN/Solaris) and HP will stimulate the next big wave of open-source
operating system software. Linux anyone?

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.