@dsc @pluralistic Randomly interesting to me: HP was one of the first companies to do this sort of thing. There was a time, long ago, when you would purchase large HP-UX boxes (pre-Superdome) that would have hardware inside that was "unlicensed," and thus disabled. To use that "hardware feature," you'd have to pay a fee (and sometimes a rolling subscription!). They did the same with their software.

@sekka @dsc @pluralistic IBM were doing this in the 1960s. Possibly the 1950s. Mainframes would be upgraded to the “large memory” model by a service engineer coming out and *cutting a link on a board*. In exchange for a few $100k down and another $5k/month on the service contract.