My point was you were basing your argument on the validity of $10 licence based on the fact it cost $10.I respectfully disagree.
That's no real debate on whether those license are legit or not. If cost is an issue, why not get pirated license of Rockwell license, it would save one thousand of $. Why not copy OEM PLC programming to a ton of machines? Again, tens of thousand of $ saved.
The company that made that software gave it away for free.
Those pirated licences aren't validated by Rockwell servers, which is why they are 'pirated'. If Microsoft says that your software license is OK, I'm not sure what else you expect to validate your concerns that it isn't really OK. My 2C.