On 2014-05-22, Larry Jaques wrote:
On 22 May 2014 05:40:20 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

[ ... ]

And *nobody* makes drivers for Solaris 10 these days. Oracle is
really killing the OS and the hardware with their more restrictive
licensing.

So scream loudly and repeatedly at Oracle for drivers, mentioning the
reason for the dearth of drivers. If nothing else, it'll make you
feel better, knowing that you're a burr under their corporate saddle.

Sun used to allow downloads of Solaris 10 for free, along with
the development system (Studio 12) to go with it, as long as you don't
need support. This simply meant that you had to have a machine capable
of running the OS (which included machines bought at hamfests or through
eBay.

They would even sometimes offer free DVDs of the OS for both
UltraSPARC and X86 machines, plus the Studio 12 development system.
plus whatever.

And -- they allowed the source for Solaris 10 to go into an
open-source project.

When Oracle took over, they allowed you to download and use a
copy for *one* month before you had to pay for a license. And to get a
license, you had to either be running on a machine which *you* alone
bought from Oracle -- or be able to show a receipt showing that you had
bought the machine from Sun before the changeover.

Nobody running hobby machines need apply, since you can't get
license for it. (Oh yes -- with the license, you also need to get a
support contract. -- Lots of money. :-)

And the open source project has been shut down.

So -- I'm using the old pre-Oracle Solaris 10 on some machines.
I'm also using OpenBSD on other machines. That way, I don't get on the
bad side of Oracle.

So complaining about the drivers would do me negative good. :-)

I've heard that Oracle is not enforcing the time limit for hobby
users, -- but they have never said so, and they have a *lot* of lawyers. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | (KV4PH) Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---