Oracle has done it, without a paid support contract you cannot get ANY Sun patches, not even critical security patches. http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-61-203648-1.
I don’t believe this is the correct way to do business, sure they stand to make a bit more money but in the grand scheme of things I can’t see it making much of a difference, only thing that will happen is that a lot of current customers will get pissed off with the new policy, and new potential customers will go a non-Sun/Oracle route ie. Linux or Windows (MS still supply free security patches).
Here is an OpenSolaris thread on the subject.
Hi,
I downloaded Sun Solaris 10 and Oracle 11gr2 (latest database from Oracle) on my SunBlade 2000 free of charge recently. I am installing Oracle ASM ( Automatic Storage Management ) but I need these Sun patches(119963-14, 120753-06, 124861-15) to complete the ASM installation. Where can find these patches other than SunSolve? Thanks, Jay
Sorry but there’s no other place than SunSolve, you have to have a support contract in order to get patches now :-/
You should contract Oracle and make them aware of the fact that you cannot evaluate their database product because of the missing patches.