[Kevin Sevcik]

Erm. Since you could easily enter a fake name and organization, and do this through a TOR node or some public network, there's effectively zero practical restriction on who can use this license. We're not talking about people doing this legally, after all.

Granted, obtaining an illicit copy of Labview or most other software isn't particularly difficult for the moderately technically savvy and moral deprived. This is just making it that little bit easier, which is confusing when NI has gone to all the trouble of having the authorization system in the first place.

As a counter example, Autodesk has just as strong an authorization system and still manages to give the teams free software without putting a public download link, license, and serial number on FIRST's website.

It might be that this is simply because of the rush to get the software to teams ASAP, and following years will have a more secure distribution model, but it's still mighty confusing.