Hello and welcome to the forum,
Someday - if you ever invent something you intend to sell - and expect to be paid for your work, you may have earned your opinion. . . So far i'll wager you have not. . .
It makes everyones life harder, and lowers productivity - user unfriendly or hostile.
No, it does not. It takes
very little time/effort to register and you only register once for the product line.
The %s used for evaluation are contrary to most places i've supported (which is very many). If an organization licenses a product, all of the documentation is periodically downloaded to a local drive and shared. Some people even print a copy (i've not done so in many years). Having active support for a newly purchased/leased product is often critical.
Now that a lot of z/os sysprog stuff is outsourced, I am finding many sites with depreciated software versions,
This has almost nothing to do with "outsourced". It does have to do with poor management. Any manager who allows the environment to fall "out of support" (i.e. product releases that are no longer supported by the vendor) should no longer have the IT responsibility. This is true if everyone is in the same building or spread all over geographically.
That is why manuals need to be online, and for 2010 the 'not' or 'but' argument does not wash well.
Whatever than means. . .
To summarize - if one belongs to an organizaton that is licensed to use a product, all of the documentation and more is available for free.