From: rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner)
Subject: Re: Question Regarding Solaris RTU Licensing (long)
Reply-To: rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner)
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro NM
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 21:33:53 GMT

In article <1992Nov19.133756@siisun.epfl.ch> brossard@sic.epfl.ch writes:
>In article <1992Nov18.222321.10382@zia.aoc.nrao.edu>, rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner) writes:
>|> In article <BxvIxz.5qn@trc.amoco.com> zclc09@npbu018.hou.amoco.com writes:
>|> >I have a question regarding licensing Sun Solaris RTU's for X-Terminals.
>|> >I am confused as to whether
>|> >I need to purchase any additional RTU's for the operating system from
>|> >Sun for these new systems.

>|> [No.]

>  Sun machines as delivered come with a RTU of two users.  If you add
>Xterminal, one may assume that each one represents one more user of
>the server hence, one more RTU to buy.  The fact that this is not
>enforced by the OS doesn't change the legal aspect of it.

Yes, this is true. But RTU's are for simultaneous users of the system, i.e. 
how many people are allowed to be logged onto it at the same time, not how 
many different individuals might ever log into it at one time or another. 
This is why vendors typically offer licenses along the lines of up to 2, 8, 
16 etc. users. I think I've even seen this sort of item in the Sun price
list.

So you don't need to buy an RTU for every X terminal unless you seriously 
expect all of them to be logged into the same system at once. And if your 
users are distributed around workstations so that no more than 2 of them use 
the same system at once, then you're 100% OK.

Of course, this is impossible to enforce if accounts are enabled globally.

> the RTU are for the users on the server, not for using the Xterminals.

Good point ... and this starts to raise some very thorny issues. (I didn't 
intend this posting to be so long when I started, but I just kept thinking 
of new aspects as I typed.)

If you want to be 100% legal about it, this gets complicated very quickly 
when there are multiple Suns on the network that the users can log onto. It's 
easy if workstations are installed and used pretty much 1 per user, but lots 
of people have a SPARC 2 or a 490 or some such which may be used by more than 
2 people at once (do multiuser-class systems such as {4,6}90's come with more 
than 2 RTUs?).

This applies regardless of where the users are logging in from: Xterminal, 
plain terminal, terminal server, or another computer. So, should you be
purchasing another RTU for your general-user system every time you add
another terminal to it? And what's to prevent a single user from logging
on multiple times, therefore counting as multiple users (which is generally
how OS's figure it)?

Can you consider the total number of RTUs purchased from Sun as an aggre-
ate for the whole network, so that as long as you don't have more than
[# RTUs] logins active at once anywhere, you're OK? I doubt it, though it 
wouldn't be an unreasonable way to proceed. You paid for them, after all.

Then we get the question of the definition of a "login". Most people would 
agree that if you type emacs and get a new window open, it isn't a login. So 
probably it should be whenever "login" is run. Hmmm ... seems to me that with 
judicious use of windows and "su", a single Xterminal user can get a *lot* of 
work done without ever running "login" a second time. Much more than users on 
ASCII terminals; so shouldn't users with windows "count" more? 

Also, as someone pointed out in a recent security thread, Xterminal users 
running xdm don't need to start up a shell to run things like filemgr and 
mailtool. xdm as shipped authenticates users, but does it run /bin/login? 
Even if it does, the source code is PD, so anyone could modify it not to. 
(I won't get into whether that might then be considered illegal.)

No wonder SunOS doesn't enforce the number of logged-in users!

I'd be interested in hearing from Sun people on this issue, and how Sun is
looking at it. Any plans to start enforcing interactive-user licensing?
If so, what do you consider a "user"?
-- 
Ruth Milner                          NRAO/VLA                  Socorro NM
Computing Division Head      rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin