🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <6dchtn$319$1@lios.apana.org.au>,
Craig Dewick <cdewick@lios.apana.org.au> wrote:
>Can someone from Sun justify making these patches available only to contract
>maintenance customers, when there is a significant proportion of clients,
>customers, administrators, users, etc. who can't afford maintenance
>contracts (such as myself) for the machines they are responsible for, and
>therefore will be left with systems that aren't completely y2k complient
>unless the y2k patches are made available to everyone.

To play Devil's Advocate, if patches are so important to you, perhaps you
need to find a way to afford the service contracts.  Compare the cost
of not being Y2K-compliant to the cost of the service contract.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Cambridge, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.

Barry Margolin <barmar@bbnplanet.com> writes:

> To play Devil's Advocate, if patches are so important to you, perhaps you
> need to find a way to afford the service contracts.  Compare the cost
> of not being Y2K-compliant to the cost of the service contract.

You pay for the OS, not for a protection racket.  I believe some other
company, Symantec maybe, had a lawsuit brought against them for
charging for Y2K patches to a product.  I wouldn't rule out a huge
class action suit against Sun if they try and do the same.


I know your playing devil's advocate tho. 8^)

-- 
Craig Brozefsky              craig@onshore.com
onShore Inc.                 http://www.onshore.com/~craig
Programmer                   loitering on the edge        

On 2 Mar 1998 07:54:15 +1100, cdewick@lios.apana.org.au (Craig Dewick) wrote:

>I've just visited the Sunsolve site to retrieve the latest public patch kit
>for Solaris 2.5.1, and I'm quite aghast to find that the y2k patches for
>Solaris 2.3 up to 2.5.1, and SunOS 4.1.x, are *NOT* publicly availlable.
>
>Can someone from Sun justify making these patches available only to contract
>maintenance customers, when there is a significant proportion of clients,
>customers, administrators, users, etc. who can't afford maintenance
>contracts (such as myself) for the machines they are responsible for, and
>therefore will be left with systems that aren't completely y2k complient
>unless the y2k patches are made available to everyone.

Probably because they know you can live without most support, and if some other
patches were only available on support contracts, you might give them a miss.
But they know you can't live without y2k patches so you'll have to go back on
support to get them.  In other words, the same reasoning used by the banks and
cable-TV companies.

andrew
------
Andrew Webber [awebber@sgml-mercs.com]
SGML Mercenaries
"Since 1990"
P.O. Box 8676, Station T, Ottawa, Ontario  K1G 3J1
613-523-3699 / Fax 613-523-6893

In article <l5wwedyv3y.fsf@onshore.com>,
Craig Brozefsky  <craig@onshore.com> wrote:
>Barry Margolin <barmar@bbnplanet.com> writes:
>
>> To play Devil's Advocate, if patches are so important to you, perhaps you
>> need to find a way to afford the service contracts.  Compare the cost
>> of not being Y2K-compliant to the cost of the service contract.
>
>You pay for the OS, not for a protection racket.  I believe some other
>company, Symantec maybe, had a lawsuit brought against them for
>charging for Y2K patches to a product.  I wouldn't rule out a huge
>class action suit against Sun if they try and do the same.
>
>
>I know your playing devil's advocate tho. 8^)

If you put on your conspiracy cap, you can wonder who might have intentionally
designed their product to break at Y2K :-)

Just kidding, but somebody must have at least considered it :-)
-- 
Any comments or statements made are not necessarily those of 
Fidelity Investments, its subsidiaries, or affiliates.
--
Bill Duncan bill@nospam

Craig Dewick wrote:
> 
> I've just visited the Sunsolve site to retrieve the latest public patch kit
> for Solaris 2.5.1, and I'm quite aghast to find that the y2k patches for
> Solaris 2.3 up to 2.5.1, and SunOS 4.1.x, are *NOT* publicly availlable.

Really? I was just looking at
http://sunsolve.sun.com/sunsolve/pubpatches/patches.html and it looks
like most if not all y2000 patches are publicly and freely available for
download. Which y2000 patches are missing from this site?

Craig Dewick wrote:
> I've just visited the Sunsolve site to retrieve the latest public
> patch kit for Solaris 2.5.1, and I'm quite aghast to find that the y2k
> patches for Solaris 2.3 up to 2.5.1, and SunOS 4.1.x, are *NOT*
> publicly availlable.

I agree with you completely, Craig. I felt exactly the same when I
saw this at SunSolve. Products which are not Y2000-compliant were
written either by lazy or short-sighted programmers, or to pander
to lazy users who couldn't be bothered to type four digits.
These are nothing more or less than BUGS, and despite all the effort
it must have taken to fix them, it is laughable of Sun to dress up
the patches as a commercial product. We should be grateful to Sun
for stopping their computers from breaking, but not THAT grateful.

Peter
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Peter Miller, Remote Sensing Group,  Phone:    +44 (0)1752 633151
Plymouth Marine Laboratory,             E-mail:   P.Miller@pml.ac.uk
Prospect Place, Plymouth PL1 3DH, UK    Web site: www.npm.ac.uk/rsdas/
----------------------------------------------------------------------

M Winkelman wrote:
> Really? I was just looking at
> http://sunsolve.sun.com/sunsolve/pubpatches/patches.html and it looks
> like most if not all y2000 patches are publicly and freely available 
> for download. Which y2000 patches are missing from this site?

Really? Look at SunSolve FAQ
http://sunsolve.sun.com/sunsolve/us/faq.html

Q  When will the Y2000 patches be included within the Security and
   Recommended Patch clusters? 

A  At this time Sun does not have plans to include Y2000 patches 
   within the Security and Recommended Patch Clusters. 

Q  What options will we have if we do not have a SunSpectrum Contract? 

A  For Solaris 2.x the only way to acquire Y2000 clusters will be with 
   a valid SunSpectrum Contract. SunOS 4.x users can purchase them 
   separately by calling 1-800-USA-4SUN.

I think you saw Y2000 patches for certain programs, not
Solaris as a whole.

Peter
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Peter Miller, Remote Sensing Group,  Phone:    +44 (0)1752 633151
Plymouth Marine Laboratory,             E-mail:   P.Miller@pml.ac.uk
Prospect Place, Plymouth PL1 3DH, UK    Web site: www.npm.ac.uk/rsdas/
----------------------------------------------------------------------