In article <205hk5INNl3j@early-bird.think.com>, barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
> We had a meeting with Sun a few months ago and
> they told us outright that they were only concerned with the "typical" use
> of a system, and the occasional third user shouldn't be a problem. Of
> course, the representatives who told us this may not be privy to the plans
> of the higher-ups, nor would I put it beyond Sun to change their stated
> policy on this.
>
> But given the fuzzy definition they're now using for "user", I think it
> would be difficult for them to enforce it. Consider the fact that NFS and
> NIS clients are now considered users, but the servers are stateless, so
> they don't have a count of the number of clients! (/etc/rmtab is never
> correct, so don't bother mentioning it.)
> --
I can fully believe your local SUN contacts believe this new policy is
not planned to be "enforced" but (a) as you said they are probably not
privy to plans of higher management; (b) why bother with the change if
it will never be enforced; (c) recent past experience with SUNSOFT make
me very suspicious (C unbundled, SCOLARPAK orders rescinded; drastically
higher maintenance charges for software; and so on).
I think the new definition of a user is VERY worrying. I will be taking
this up with our local SUN person but with over 300 SUNs installed and
depending on what the server license costs, this could make us rethink
our purchasing policy since we make heavy use of NFS and X terminals.
Alan Silverman
UNIX Workstation Support Manager
+------- CERN - European Laboratory for Particle Physics -------+
| E-mail: alan@cnswalan.cern.ch |
| Earth-mail: CN/SW/WS, CERN, CH-1211 GENEVE 23, Switzerland |
| Phone: +41 22 767 49 55 Fax: +41 22 767 71 55 |
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