There's a long history now of "cloud dependent" software, hardware, and media people have purchased from many major vendors that have been effectively overnight without recourse / warning rendered completely perpetually unavailable and stolen away from the product owners because it simply ceases to be accessible if it can't "call home" to the cloud even if the product is otherwise quite potentially usable standalone from any actual cloud resources.
Obviously larger enterprise customers may not care since they probably have some private license server and service contract with Altium they can hold the company to but at least when in years past one bought a perpetual copy of Eagle one could keep the installer and local license key file and use those standalone & reinstall / use it forever, whereas with Altium it seems that there's a (not unprecedented) risk that it could just stop being usable one day if they get bought, go out of business, have technical problems that makes their cloud stuff unavailable, etc. etc.
And that's apparently a regression from how it used to work much more sanely & securely in versions past!
As I mentioned in the previous post, I have no issues when installing AD using an off-line installer and a standalone ALF file on a totally isolated machine - even the current AD21.
As to "clown" computing (i found out one guy on the AD forum hates me saying that) and/or licenses limited to a particular machine config, I'm wondering what the any progress in a users "Right to Fix" is going to do. I've mentioned this many times before, but a license is considered to be between entities - not machines. Now a company can totally close source firmware for a particular packaged product, but as a rule (as mentioned in the Fenwick document
http://www.fenwick.com/FenwickDocuments/Patent_Licensing.pdf ) Licencees look to have the right to:
"... generally seek to ensure that
nothing interferes with the benefits they have received. For example, licensees are concerned
with their ability to obtain assistance from the licensor in fixing defects that are discovered in
the technology, to have the right to fix the defects themselves if the licensor is unable to do
so, to obtain periodic upgrades and other maintenance services from the licensor, to transfer
their rights if they sell their business and to continue enjoying the technology even if the
licensor becomes bankrupt."
The next section - Licensor and Licensee Restrictions - is quite interesting and might be able to be construed as a limitation on Licensors restricting their licensees to a particular computational unit (ie a specific hard drive serial number, a specific hardware number of any type).
For instance, Microsoft wants you to "activate" the software for a particular machine. Again, under "Quiet Enjoyment" (which Microsoft denies in their EULA click thru/shrink wrap) I'm not sure what that would do.
This is why Autodesk and Adobe went to a "rental" SaaS model - which looks great on the company books due tot he recurrent revenue stream.
Using a licensed technology to design YOUR Intellectual Property is, I believe, going to become a serious issue as to whether a licensee - under reasonable circumstances - can be assured "Quiet Enjoyment". It's also going to be tested as to whom owns the IP and who is legally responsible for it.