RTU License Upgrades -- Sun reneges

[gnu at toad.com]

Sun has gone through an internal re-assessment and has decided that they
really DO want to charge everyone for RTU License Upgrades, regardless of
what the legalese says.

Apparently the vice president of Sun who confirmed the meaning of the
legalese has been overruled by SunOS Product Marketing and they intend to
press forward and attempt to charge all of us.

The claim is that the wording in the license is a "dragnet clause" which
is intended to drag in various releases of files such as patch tapes.
Supposedly it's OK for us to receive patches one at a time under our
existing RTU license, but if we receive them all at once (as a new
release) then the legalese suddenly stops applying and they claim we need
to pay more.  I disagree -- the wording of the license is very clear and
precise, and it applies to any and all derived works.

I'm hearing that various folks in Sun are upset at me (again!).  All I can
say is, I'm sorry you're upset that I'm the kind of guy who actually reads
your contracts and licenses and follows them rather than following Sun
policy.  When I was an employee there (5 years ago), I handled this kind
of stuff by internal wrangling; if Sun doesn't want the customers to find
out about such things, they never should've let me go.  As it was, I
waited two weeks for a confirmed opinion from the Sun Legal department
before informing the net.

I expect to order SunOS 4.1 without paying an RTU upgrade fee.  If they
won't sell it to me, then we may have to get a court to rule on exactly
what their legalese means.  Any other customers who are harassed by Sun to
pay this non-required fee, let me know; there's strength in numbers.

	John Gilmore

PS: I'll be at Usenix for a few days, send email to gnu at toad.com and
expect a delay.