alexcoppo, you raised an interesting point there but your point has an almost exact analogy in something as prosaic as an electrical appliance or a car, for example. If you buy, say, a washing machine, it can happen that its manufacturer goes bankrupt and shuts down or, less radically, stops doing that specific piece of equipment. With both events, you may run out of spare parts and if you need to repair it, even if a minor repair, you may discover that you can no longer do it and your expensive equipment is now a piece of useless trash. 

Is this really a decision argument when you go buy an electrical appliance? Do you seriously think, before buying "hmmm, let's see, what's more likely to shutdown, Samsung or Sony?".

If the manufacturer shuts down (whether one of an electrical appliance or software), you just turn to their competitors. In case of Vue, you can turn to Carrara, for example (have you seen some of the latest landscapes in the Carrara gallery? they're gorgeous). Vue has some unique points but, let's face it, there are lots of people doing landscape images in CG without Vue. I've seen some great work with 3DS Max, for example.

kyraia and LCBoliou, you also have some good points and, of course, the industry will avoid the extremes because these bring problems. That's always the same, whatever the business. Extreme strategies are not good and the market will decide which are reasonable and which are not. People may complain about it in forums but in the end it will be the power of money that will make the manufacturers decide...

In my opinion, the current strategy of e-on is not an extreme one, far from it, and I can't understand the position of kyraia and bobbystahr when you say that you don't buy Vue because you have to activate it online. It's something I just can't understand.