To further encourage more customers to take advantage of the comprehensive benefits a maintenance contract provides, Novell is announcing that as of November 15, 2009, maintenance or subscription authorization will be required to access service packs and patches (excluding stand-alone security patches) for most Novell products.
In early 2010, they will extend this initiative to include Technical Information Documents (TIDs) in the Novell Support Knowledgebase for products in the general support phase of the product lifecycle.