I apologize, I wasn’t putting the word “free” into your mouth so much as thinking ‘out loud’ about what alternatives may exist.
Your idea does sound like a good one, I will not refute that. I will refute “easy hill for a climbing programmer” as that is often a confusing thing to folks outside of the software industry. It is not uncommon for software companies to license licensing systems to solve problems, SketchUp has had several different options over the years. We don’t own the code, we pay for the ability to use it. Additionally, our software engineers have backgrounds in things like 3D or graphics, openGL or parts of SketchUp… but since we have had turnkey licenses in the past, we do not have a big team of licensing and security engineers. Alas, that means we can’t simply re-write their code. There is one system that handles perpetual licenses, one that handles network licenses and now one that handles subscriptions. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I do like to educate people (even when its somewhere else in the world of software) that “easy for a programmer” rarely is… or it would already be done.
I’ll say again, your suggestion seems like a nice, user-friendly option. I’m not the guy making the decision (just like Colin or Aaron) and we’re here 50% users/fans of SketchUp and 50% employees of Trimble. I’m not here to fight you, just listen and share your thoughts with the rest of the team, or to help you understand that its either not the villainous picture you assume or at least help understand why we are where we are. I’ll pass your idea along, for sure.