Confused: SunOS Licensing

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Can you help me with my software licensing question?

I'm confused about the state of OpenSolaris/SunOS/OracleExpress..

Can I use SunOS 10 for free? In a productive commercial environment?

Thanks!

You should speak to your local Oracle representative about this. — user9517, Jun 21 '11 at 09:09
Presumably you mean Solaris 10, in which the kernel identifies itself as SunOS 5.10 - there is no "SunOS 10". — alanc, Jun 21 '11 at 23:44

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 21 '11 at 09:32

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At the very least if you wish to download & apply patches you have to have a maintenance agreement.

answered Jun 21 '11 at 09:32

jamespo

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 21 '11 at 18:28

OpenSolaris is composed of several consolidations and the main one is OS/Net which has the kernel and much of the userland. Other components of it are the pkg tools, X, etc. Oracle has stopped sharing updates it does to the OS/Net consolidation (most of the OpenSolaris OS). These changes are not flowing from their internal repository to the public OpenSolaris repository anymore. This means that the core development in OpenSolaris is dead which renders the project defunct. People can still see and somehow participate in IPS and Caiman (installer) development but getting your patches accepted is an esoteric process. Advice: look at OpenIndiana (distro) and Illumos (equivalent to OpenSolars OS/Net).

OpenSolaris.org is still up and Oracle is accepting patches if you wish to sign their OCA (Oracle Contributor Agreement), if you are willing to transfer copyright to Oracle. Since your own contribution won't be made available, people have had no incentive to collaborate in this way so OpenSolaris is essentially dead as a project, product or whatever.

Oracle has changed the licensing policy for Solaris 10 in that it's not possible to use it in production without a support contract. You can download the DVD ISO for test, development and prototype purposes but when you start making money out of it, you need a support contract or you're breaking the license terms that you agreed to when you downloaded the software.

Right after the Sun acquisition, Oracle tried to impose a 30-day trial limit on Solaris 10 but that didn't work so they reverted back to the policy I explained above. The same applies to Solaris 11 Express.

Confused: SunOS Licensing

2 Answers2