TLDR: Ubuntu Pro offers additional security patches to packages found in the universe repo. Universe is community maintained so Ubuntu is essentially stepping in to provide critical CVE patches to some popular software in this repo that the community has not addressed.

I suppose it depends on how you look at it but I don’t really see this as withholding patches. Software in this repo would otherwise be missing these patches and it’s a ton of work for Ubuntu to provide these patches themselves.

Now is they move glibc to universe and tell me to subscribe to get updates I’ll feel differently.

When you buy something from a streaming service you’re only buying the right to stream it, nothing more.

You can’t compare it to owning physical media because there are ongoing costs involved for Amazon to host it and ever changing contracts with media companies outlining what they are allowed to host.

The fall of newspapers led us down the path of click bait, low quality, ad driven “news”. Very few newspapers survived the transition to digital because suddenly nobody wanted to pay for access to something they could get online for free. Those that did survive mostly exist in a much smaller form with low funding and reduced quality.

Personally, I’m excited to see it becoming more common for people to subscribe to news services again. I just wish there was more diversity and competition available like there was in the past but I’m hopeful we’ll get there as more people seem to be opening back up to paying for high quality publications.

High quality journalism can’t exist without paid subscribers but there are still ways to access it for those who can’t afford it, visiting a local library for example.