Say I have a free Developer edition for developing and a full (paid) version for production use. If I have understood the current information correctly then SAP is going to make coming EBFs only available for customers with a support contract, so users of a "Developer edition only" won't get access to those EBFs. Question: If I am allowed to get EBFs based on my support contract, am I allowed to use those for the Developer edition install, too? I certainly hope so. |
If you have purchased support, you can download and apply the SQL Anywhere ebfs/service packs to any of your development editions. |
I'd like to add some links to those "Free the EBFs" discussions on this forum, but unfortunately the search fails with a 500 server error... - if someone has the fitting links, please add them:)
The whole approach is bizarre - the software SAP are going to use to try to sell the product will (inevitably - it's the nature of software) have bugs in it - which SAP will become aware of. The pitch is going to be - "Well if you buy it, you may find we've fixed it" - quite a punchy sales line :) This wouldn't be so bad if it was SAP's sales force having to push it, but it's going to be us - the OEM channel - in danger of having the rug pulled out from under our feet.
FWIW, here is the link with Breck's urgent question and Jason's clear answer...
Will EBFs no longer be free after June 30?
A quote from a comment on that answer:
Any explanations from the SQL Anywhere team are still appreciated...
That raises another question:
Will the EBF readme information be freely available? - If not, even the answer if/when a known bug may be fixed won't be available for those without a support contract...
Just a late addition:
The question whether a known bug is fixed is publically available since several monthes via the "SQL Anywhere Readmes" website, although this does not tell what EBFs are available for what platform and may not always list the freshest EBFs immediately - say, currently it does not list 17.0.4.2053 although that has been released for the most popular platforms Windows and Linux a few days ago...
Don't get me wrong: That's not perfect but way better than no public available EBF information!