[geeks] Solaris 9 released

[Bill Bradford]

Its out -

http://www.sun.com/solaris

Unfortunately, no downloads for a few days.  However, you can order the 
"slim" media kit (just the OS, on both CD and DVD) for $50, and the "full"
media kit (with bonus software) for $95.

One thing a lot of people may not have noticed - the "Free Solaris" program
was formerly "free" for use on systems with less than 8 CPUs.  That has been
changed to only allow "free" use on systems with ONE CPU:

http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/licensing.html

There is nothing in place (that I know of) to enforce this licensing; they
just want you to pay more if you have more than one CPU... However, in some
cases (older SS10/20 systems, etc) the value of the Solaris license will
exceed the value of the system it will be running on.  

IMHO, this change will just result in a lot of people "illegally" running
Solaris 9 on their systems, as it was before the "Free Solaris" licensing
program came out.. and it will result in a lot of bad PR for Sun, who 
apparently dont think that people might have SMP systems at home.

Thoughts?

Bill

-- 
Bill Bradford     
mrbill at mrbill.net 
Austin, TX