I'm bettin' that most of these promotions are funded by Pace.  You are seeing developers moving away from iLok or giving you an option. (UVI)
 
Food for thought:
 
The closest thing to that is iLok. But the problem with a system like that is that it gives the most important control of your product to another company...and you have to go along with their way of doing things, even if that's NOT the way you want to do business. Not only that, but if something happens to that company or that system, then it affects everybody...hundreds of products and hundreds of thousands of users! The concept of paying for a system like that, when we can do a better job of it in-house is extremely distasteful to me.
It's weird....we lose some sales to Pro Tools users because we don't use iLok and they prefer to have a dongle. But if we did, there are many thousands more of our users that would hate going to a dongle system. (and offering both dongle and dongless methods just complicates things, providing less reliability, more tech support and less security as well).
I just would never trust another company (especially PACE) with such a valuable and key part of my business and how I interact with my customers.  Eric Persing Founder of Spectrasonics.

bitflipper
I will never buy another Waves product; their emails get deleted without reading.

Save yourself all that pesky deleting 

Dub,
 
No apologies needed, after all, I started this mess.
 
Machine, point well taken. Don't entirely agree with you, but in a court of law you have the upper hand. Too rude and crude here to sort it out, but can't rule out that you may also have the higher hand otherwise. Don't know.
 
Not the most evolved entity crawling around on all fours, so see some issues gut level as black and white, where better souls can see shades or gray.
 
My frustration in innocent activation failures and anger in deliberate ripoffs is that the EULA grants our license to USE the software, not to struggle for hours or days trying to get something to work that has failed and is costing you time, grief, energy, resources to fix. Demeaning and degrading treatment as a company has to research why you are trying to obtain additional activations.
 
My crashes with innocent failures have cost me money and credibility. Money would have been nice, but credibility not easily fixed. We are not compensated for the PACE and Ilock failures. Energy expenditure, like going to see a doctor and being told to show up 15 minutes before the appointment and having to wait 3 hours. What are the hours worth.
 
Crashes with deliberate immoral company ripoffs have cost those bastards getting another cent out of me, for what insignificant impact it will have. Won't drag multiple companies thru the mud who have screwed me, but when Waves terminated my transfer of GTR Solo, it was a new game. They only demanded $20 or the like ransom to allow any more transfers and said they would not invade my computer and disable the existing program, but the new rules were that I now have to fire up the credit card to allow transfer to another computer.
 
Took less that 3 minutes to find the GTR crack, so Waves can put it where the sun don't shine. Me and Waves are cool now. GTR is collecting dust, but goes wherever it wants to go. The bastards won't get another cent out of me for anything. Sure, maybe the EULA in some fine print sleight of hand gave up my "legal" rights. My point in all this is trying to find the ethical balance between legal and moral. What does the little guy have the moral right to do when the big guys are out to premeditated criminally bury you.
 
John

kitekrazy1

dubdisciple
Interesting stance and even more interesting coming directly from a software maker.

 Some are more into satisfying the end user over protecting their product.  That's where my money goes.

Kite, maybe it's my cynicism or my personal experiences working for huge companies, but it is rare when I actually believe that companies ever put customer satisfaction as a priority over their own self -serving interests, even if they maintain the illusion of such. I once worked for a company where part of my job was to re-word the truth into something that was not exactly honest but technically not a lie for the sole purpose of making oujr company look like they cared more about clients than they did. Perception often trumps reality.  I don't know if Mr. Persings stance is out of deep concern for customner experience or the admitted fact that he hates relinquishing power.  For all I know he may have done the math and decided that a formula accounting for clients willing to use ilok vs those who don't and taking into account licensing costs did not asdd up to a bottom line figure he was comfortable with.  The possibilities are endless and without knowing him personally, those possibilities will remain endless regardless of how any of us choose to paint his motives.

Thanks Bit,
 
Guardedly think I can trust my Mom even if everything else is in question...
 
John