Posted 05/02/2009 at 10:06:36am

Of course it's an option...

 If M$ tries to cram this down folks throats; I'm certain we'll see a mass defection to (pick a variant) of "Linux".

 Other companies have had such things as 

•  Monthly Maintenance fees (based on CPU Capacity)
• Capacity on Demand.  What, you have a quad / octi / hexi core processor and you would like for some software to use more than one core at a time? Simple; enable "Capacity". Pay for the period of time you want / need for the software to use additional cores. 

So if you want / need software service / maintenance for the life of the product; pay for it!

It's not that far fetched.