Re: Why no patches available from Oracle's ftp/www server ?

In article <32528E1B.3DDB_at_nla.gov.au>, Bruce Pihlamae <bpihlama_at_nla.gov.au> writes:
>Chuck Hamilton wrote:
>You miss the three very important reasons why Oracle doesn't post
>patches:
>
>1) Oracle does not admit that there are bugs in its software, unless
>pressed.

Not on www.oracle.co.uk they don't - it's got a complete list of all known bug reports and/or fixes.

>2) You should pay for the fixes to the bugs that Oracle has installed.

Yes, which explains why www.oracle.co.uk is username/password protected, although annoyingly from the top-level and rather than just a sub-section. It should have an unprotected home page that says "www.oracle.co.uk is for UK Oracle customers with a support contract only. If you are such a customer, then you can obtain a username/password as follows...<blah blah blah>".

>3) You must first encounter the well known, documented, and patched bug
> before Oracle will admit that it exists.

It seems to me that some bugs go unfixed for a worrying length of time, even *after* they've been initially reported. Want to use "ob2htmlm" to convert your Oracle Book docs into HTML ? Well, good luck is all I can say ! www.oracle.co.uk reports numerous problems with this bug-ridden utility, not least the fact that critical config files and graphics were completely left off the CD-ROM distribution ! And there's *still* no fix for this, a year after it was first reported. Never mind the other problems (the program core dumps at the drop of a hat for instance).

Richard K. Lloyd,           E-mail: rkl_at_csc.liv.ac.uk
Connect,                       WWW: http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/users/rkl/