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 -- ===> Netiquette - read it, use it: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html <=== ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas Ribbrock http://www.ribbrock.org "You have to live on the edge of reality - to make your dreams come true!"
