I can certainly see your point, but the intervals would have to be far enough apart that the user is not hampered by it all of the time. There should also be a message, like a toast, or a message gauge, that would inform the user xx number of days in advance that a connection is going to be necessary. This way, it does not catch the user off guard.
When it does time out, I recommend a couple of different strategies. The first would be that the styling all be removed. Make colors black and white, remove graphics/needles, but retain the numbers. This makes it look bad, but still convey information. Another very graphical software package I work with will start normally, but after a random interval (2-10 minutes), it will shrink the graphics of the entire screen to about 1/3 it’s original size. It’s functional, but certainly not practical. All of the writing is super tiny, and only usable enough to see that it is working. People want RD, because it looks slick, not because it will tell them things the original dash would already tell them. Either one of these strategies will prevent people from wanting to continue unlicensed.
Sure, it will look awful, but if I am out and away from a connection, and my dash will not give me basic info, such as speed and other vital information, then I am looking at a potential safety and legal issue on the roadway. If I’m at work, ready to head home in a long commute, and my dash will not work, I am in a pickle. Pop up a message and tell the user they are in reduced functionality mode. This keeps drivers who didn’t put RD in their car (ie, my Wife) informed that there is not some catastrophic problem with the car, and they don’t freak out because their car doesn’t work.
Onto a licensing scheme. I have a software package, that is a pretty high dollar item. There is a license manager for it. It binds itself to my hardware. There is an online portal, where I manage what hardware it is bound to. I run the software, it goes out to the site to verify my license. If it lines up with what I have selected on the portal, then all is good. If not, it requests me to enable it. I have to log onto the online site, and authorize. If there is no hardware currently in my folder, then it will ask if I want to enable this hardware, yes or no. If I select yes, I see the IP address, and a hash of the hardware. If I want to change the hardware, then the process is the same, and it will give me the option to add a license, or to replace the existing hash with the new one, and the old one will disable the next time it checks for a license. This allows me to move from one piece of hardware to another, or easily add another license, but in either case, there is this quasi-two-factor authorization. Basically, it allows me to use any hardware I want, but through the licensing, only one piece at a time - OR - it will make it all too easy to give the company more money to buy an additional license.
This keeps you and your team from having to tie up their time in handling license issues. It seems that you have the user control panel portion of MRD already working, so perhaps this sort of function could be added? BTW, I have another package, that is very low end (US$19.95) that uses an almost identical scheme. If you’d like more info on how either package works, I’d be glad to discuss.
Now in the case of RD, it is possible that two pieces of hardware are operating at a time, but maybe only for a few days, until the software needs to check in, and finds out that the license is no longer valid. At that point, RD will pop up with one of the reduced functionality modes, a message, and kick off an option to add or replace a license.