[EdHominem]

The managers of this hypothetical software company would surely complain if their cars were remotely disabled because the manufacturer wanted to sell a new model. Similarly their customers should complain (via the courts) when the product they bought is remotely disabled to force them to upgrade.

As a sibling poster points out, running a license server is a trivial expense and if you require it for your product you should budget to keep it running. It's roughly $400 for a perpetuity paying $20/y to run the server indefinitely.

[alkonaut]

I completely agree - but hopefully if the management knows what they are doing in 2002 they don't sell a license that gives the buyer perpetual right to use the software (they can't guarantee that so long as the maintenance of license servers is required. Having a perpetual license is basically an infinite future expense even if the cost is trivial.)

[EdHominem]

> Having a perpetual license is basically an infinite future expense even if the cost is trivial.

It's a one-time expense if budgeted properly. Buy a perpetuity to cover it. If you ever discontinue the service you can release an unlimited copy of the software and recover the value of the perpetuity.