Oracle/Sun Enforces Pay-For-Security-Updates PlanRecently, the Oracle/Sun conglomerate has denied public download access to all service packs for Solaris
unless you have a support contract.
Now, paying a premium for gold-class service is nothing new in the industry,
but withholding critical security updates smacks of extortion. While this pay-for-play model may be
de rigueur for enterprise database systems, it is certainly not the norm for OS manufactures.
What may be more interesting is how Oracle/Sun is able to sidestep GNU licensing requirements since several of the Solaris cluster packs contain patches to GNU utilities and applications.