So with IBM LPARs, 'capping' a partition is just a check box. There is nothing stopping you running the partition capped at audit time then uncapping later. I don't see how this is any different to VMWare vCPUs. Both allow you to at the press of a button increases resources. Technically there is no difference between a hard partition you can change with a software command and a "soft" partition you can change with a software command.
Just as there was nothing stopping you physically installing / removing CPUs to suit audit purposes. This is not a technical issue (hard vs. soft partitioning) but rather a anti-competition issue.
This has always been a way of Oracle trying to suppress what it sees as a competitor to it's own virtualisation strategy. Originally it was to push people to Solaris, but since that didn't work out so well the only place left to compete is x86.
Oracle licensing has never been about a standard price, it's always been about how much the sales people think they can squeeze out of the customer.
Once upon a time there was a company that had a layer on top of MySQL that provided pretty good compatibility with Oracle standard edition. I wonder whatever happened to them?