On Thu, 19 Aug 2010, Carlos O'Donell wrote: > On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 9:33 PM, John David Anglin > <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I have forwarded this message to the list because I believe that > > this change by HP will impact my support of GCC and binutils on parisc > > particularly for hpux. However, I have always felt that hpux testing > > provided an important validation for linux. For many years (since > > at least 1990), patches were available without a support agreement. > > > > Comments? > > Sorry, could you please clarify your position? I have to say I'm surprised by the change. I think it will lead to HP hardware and software products being viewed as unreliable and insecure as most small businesses and software developers can't afford support agreements. When I had a HP system with a support agreement (early 90s), the cost was a few thousand a year (can't remember what it exactly covered). There is a place for support agreements in large enterprises for mission critical products. I have no objection to a timed phase out of support for any product, but I think it unusual that HP will require a support agreement to access its patch database. Microsoft, Apple and many others provide automatic updates for serious bugs and security problems for the nominal support life of their products. Patching HP-UX is still pretty much a manual operation, and the patch database provides important clues as to what a given patch fixes. As far as I know, there are no product enhancements available through the patch database. The full implications of the change are not clear. For example, patches have been available via ftp without using the patch database. It may not apply to products that don't use the patch database for distribution. Sendmail is broken again in HP-UX (HPSBUX02508 SSRT100007 rev.2)... Dave -- J. David Anglin dave.anglin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx National Research Council of Canada (613) 990-0752 (FAX: 952-6602) -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-parisc" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
