Solaris for free?

[Peter]

I just put in my order for Solaris. $10 for PC platform media, $10 for
SPARC platform media and $8.95 for shipping.  There is a 3-4 week wait
(due to demand they say).

Chuck Young wrote:
> 
> No validity is implied.  I'm waiting for confirmation myself, but it is an
> interesting thought...
> 
> Chuck Young
> GTE Internetworking
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> fwd :
> [ extracted from TechWeb]
> Sun Releases Solaris For Free
> (08/10/98; 8:12 p.m. ET)
> By Malcolm Maclachlan, TechWeb
> 
> Sun took a dive into the freeware community Monday,
> releasing its Solaris operating environment free for
> non-commercial use.
> 
> Solaris is Sun's flavor of Unix.  Starting Monday,
> educators and others who sign an agreement not to use
> the software for commercial purposes may download the
> environment for free.  Solaris normally costs $695,
> though educators usually pay only $99 for it, said
> Graham Lovell, group marketing manager for education
> at Sun.
> 
> The free release of Solaris will accomplish a number
> of Sun's goals, Lovell said. First, the company wants
> to push Solaris on both Sparc and PC environments. He
> said the company was surprised by the growing demand
> from people who wanted to run Solaris on PCs.  The
> plan will also accommodate organizations that want to
> upgrade from older versions of Solaris but can't
> afford to.
> 
> In addition, Sun (company profile) wants to promote
> development for the Solaris platform. However, Lovell
> denied the release had anything to do with the growing
> popularity of Linux, a free version of Unix that has
> gained support from Netscape and Novell.
> 
> "Linux is not the competition," he said.  "The
> competition is non-Unix operating systems."
> 
> But one analyst disagrees. Larry Augustin, president
> of systems vendor VA Research, said Sun's decision to
> give away Solaris for non-commercial use has a lot to
> do with Linux. "Sun knows that open-source, free
> software is biting into them from the bottom of the
> market," he said.
> 
> Lovell also declined to identify Microsoft's Windows
> NT as the main thrust of the non-Unix competition,
> saying only "NT is certainly in that category."
> 
> Solaris is the leading flavor of Unix, according to
> studies by International Data Corp., and other
> research firms, commanding a 50 percent market share.
> However, the Unix market has been eroded by Windows
> NT. Sun itself entered the NT business last month,
> acquiring application-server vendor NetDynamics.
> 
> The release is good for Unix as a whole, Augustin
> said, but is probably not that important overall. Five
> years ago, it would have been revolutionary. But
> compared to other recent free OS and open-source
> efforts, this non-commercial release has a "me-too"
> feel, he said.
> 
> What would be revolutionary, he added, is if Sun
> released the Solaris source code, which would allow
> the company to quickly address the OS's shortcomings,
> such as its slow speed on Intel platforms.
> 
> Users of the free Solaris program will receive support
> and information through the Solaris Developer
> connection program. The Sun website also contains a
> directory of free software available for the Solaris
> platform.
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
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