This is exactly what we experienced when Oracle bought Sun. Except we /did/
have support contracts for all our hardware, but Oracle kept "losing" them.
It took us almost two years to get it all straightened out.

On Mon, Jun 09, 2014 at 10:40:23AM -0400, Zoltan Forray wrote:
> <rant on>
> I went out looking for firmware updates for my IBM 3592E06 drives that live
> in my IBM 3583 Library.  I realized I needed to go to Fix Central from the
> last time I went looking (a year ago) and couldn't find them on the FTP
> site.
>
> What I wasn't expecting is the need for my tape drive serial numbers.  Then
> after supplying one of them, I was denied the firmware since our drives are
> not under an IBM maintenance contract.
>
> Anybody care to share?
> <rant off>

--
-- Skylar Thompson (skylar2 AT u.washington DOT edu)
-- Genome Sciences Department, System Administrator
-- Foege Building S046, (206)-685-7354
-- University of Washington School of Medicine