If you need to change a read-only file, what you should do is find the owner of the file and have its permissions changed. But if you can’t find the owner of the file, and your changes really must be done immediately, you can also just copy the file and make your changes in the copy:
% cp updates ~/updates.mine % vi ~/updates.mine (edit as needed)
The only caveat is that you need to make sure that your “new” version of the file is copied over the “real” version before more changes are made to it. So send email to the owner:
% mail mike Subject: updates file Hey, I needed to make changes to updates, but I didn't have write permission, so I made my changes into a copy in my home directory named updates.mine. Please stay out of the updates file for now. I'll let you know when the changed version can be copied into the original.
Otherwise you risk having to merge changes from two different versions of the file.