Recently, Oracle has made several changes in Solaris support that have people wondering if Solaris just got too expensive to run.
The first change was to move to a pay-for-security model which some have already compared to extortion. Patches for Solaris would only be available to paying support customers, leaving others to be insecure and without recourse.
The other change that Oracle has made is to force its paying support customers into an “all or nothing” support model: either all Solaris systems are under a support contract or Oracle will not enter into a support agreement. This means that in any environment that all Solaris systems must be accounted for and under Oracle support.
With this latter change, it may be that this pay-for-security model, while still unseemly, will have less of an effect than previously suggested. It may also convince many smaller businesses to scale back their Solaris installations and to get rid of older machines instead of holding on to them.
At its worst, it may mean that support for software on older Sun machines may wither faster, and that older machines will become obsolete – and useless – faster, increasing “churn” in the data center and (perhaps) making the data center more energy-efficient, while costing companies more and making Oracle more money.
However, one thing Oracle has not done is to clarify the future of OpenSolaris. The community is waiting for a definitive statement from Oracle; even former Sun employees working with OpenSolaris have no signs from Oracle in any direction.
UPDATE: Ben Rockwood over at the Cuddletech blog has excellent coverage, with detailed analysis of the relevant licenses and what it means for Solaris end-users. On the 26th he discusses the “all-or-nothing” support model, and on the 28th he writes about Oracle’s choice to remove the ability to use Solaris for free.
UNIX Administratosphere 
Classic case of purchase the competition and destroy the product. Oracle does not really care.
They’ll probably loose a lot of buisiness too.
One of my bigest customers was looking at moving it’s IBM AIX/DB2 systems over to Sun Solaris and Oracle 10g last year.
They are now putting a plan in place to migrate the current Sun Solaris kit over to IBM hardware with Linux or AIX and move the Databases to DB2.
In short for a Solaris/Oracle admin the move has been a disaster.
It was the reverse for us in 2003, when some dick-head mgr thought he would switch to IBM/RHEL 3 (on our Oracle databases) from Sun.
But a week later with horrible support/responses/fixes from IBM, we flipped the switch back on our Sun E10k mainframe and have “NEVER” looked back, …. sadly, until just lately again, that idea is rearing its ugly head again. ? But this time, upper-mgmt are looking at IBM+ SAP, or IBM’s DB, … ?
wow, IBM is laughing their heads off at Oracle.
I think I can say emphatically now, especially now that Oracle has basically killed OpenSolaris, and even Java on Linux (hence openjdk), that that retard CEO from Oracle, Larry ?, is a cowardly TURNCOAT piece of caca.
That fool at Oracle had the best running Unix/NetOS in the world, and he threw it all away for a Linux desktop ?
and now, all I hear in the server circles is that many are slowly leaving and going to IBM,… !
Ok, well listen real hard “Larry ________-wad”.
YOU and your company will be swallowed and buried by IBM/Wintel/Microsoft now.
Oracle lately, has in essence, ran out of any ingenuity (and good Sun Hardware engineers), except for just their greedy stock holders, which will befall Oracle, just like it did Sun.
Hey, no sense, no feeling, eh Oracle ?
Summarily, Oracle was and will always be remebered, in the not to distant future, as just that Sun killer, and nuthin’ more.
Great epitaph Larry, maybe you should just join your crash-buddies on Wall street now.
comon, just get it over with already.
lmao