On the other hand, it makes me a bit nervous that oscilloscopes now also "phone home" to the manufacturer. That opens up new possibilities to detect or disable hacked licenses, if Rigol so desires.
People have been worrying about that for decades, Rigol hasn't done it yet...
(and won't, because it would be a sales disaster for them)
Maybe... As long as the scopes were not calling back home, Rigol had no way to detect "home-made" licenses. Now, with the central generation of all purchased licenses via rigol.com and with scopes reporting back to base, they
can detect this.
Rigol would also have new ways of addressing users directly, "talking" to them via their scopes. They could e.g. set the invalid licenses back to "trial" status for a while and encourage users to buy a permanent license. Ah, brave new world...
Sure, we don't know whether Rigol will take this step. Compared to the MSO5000 hackability, DHO users are already kept on a much tighter leash. Maybe that's good enough for Rigol, maybe not. As former "this is expensive" differentiators like 12 bit ADC and 10" or larger screen get commoditized, they may look for new ways to charge extra money.
In any case, my scope will not be allowed to phone home, via suitable firewall settings. That should work for now -- until the next generation of scopes
insists on an online connection to check the license status every fortnight...