Why require activation for a free product?
A couple of reasons. From a support perspective, there are times when we need to reach our customers — for example, when an important update or patch is available. Activation also gives us generally better metrics than are otherwise available. From a protection perspective, we have a responsibility to protect customers — there are unscrupulous people that take capable free products and resell them and that’s something that’s obviously damaging to all. There are business reasons too: we want to give away something great… so you’ll eventually move to something even better from us. We can’t really do that unless we can get out the message.
