SUMMARY: Solaris 2.2 licensing

From: Malcolm C. Strickland (chucks@orl.mmc.com)
Date: Mon Jun 14 1993 - 18:11:14 CDT


  The licensing for Solaris 2.2 has changed regarding the definition
  of User. And a new definition of client has been added. I have
  confirmed this with my local sales rep. Whom, is very upset about
  the definition change.

  Capsule:
  A desktop system is shipped with a 2 user license by default. A server
  system is shipped with a unlimited license. Sun has dropped the
  4 and 20 user license so the only choice is 2 user or unlimited.

  Now the definition of a user is.

  1. A login from console or directly connected tty.
  2. An X terminal session.
  3. A remote login session.

  The key difference here is the the remote login session uses a
  user slot even if it is from another system running solaris. In contrast
  to previous releases that exempted a remote login from another solaris
  system.

  A new definition of client is now given. If you system meets the definition
  of having at least one client then it must have the unlimited license
  which is the same as server license.

  A system has a client or is a server if :
  1. another system mounts disk space via NFS or other file sharing
     protocol.
  2. provides boot binaries
  3. provides compute or database services (even by sql calls).
  4. provides NIS, domain name, kerebos, whois or other network
     naming, security or information services. Not certain if
     a gopher, wais or WWW server would qualify for a server
     license.

  
 Effects: for myself and least most of the respondents this is going to
  require us to buy server licenses for most of our systems just to
  maintain our existing method of operation. AT a non-discounted price
  of $1200.00 per system this will be very expensive. Especially considering
  that I have been paying os maintenece costs all along.

 My local salesman is very upset about this and some respondents reported
 the same. So far SunSoft is holding to the new definition with no signs
 of changing.

 If this is a problem for you then please contact you local sales rep
 via a letter or email so they can forward it to corporate. Make sure
 you include the costs of this change in the letter.

 For the future you really should add an additional cost of $1200.00 to
 all systems and purchase a server license up front. This will make the
 solaris systems non-price competitive. Might be the only way to
 convice SunSoft to alter the licensing policy.

 IMHO if SunSoft would just return to the old definition of user and
 drop the client definition then life would get easy again.

 

 for detailed information get the SunFlash 53.27 from one of the
 following archives:

Archives are on solar.nova.edu, ftp.uu.net, sunsite.unc.edu,
src.doc.ic.ac.uk and ftp.adelaide.edu.au

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Malcolm C. Strickland Martin Marietta Missile Systems
chuck-strickland@orl.mmc.com mail point 170
Phone: 407-356-7437 pobox 555837
Fax: 407-356-5482 orlando florida 32855-5837
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