Microsoft understands that there are cases where you should be able to completely and legitimately use their software for a period of time, before having to provide proper activation. This becomes a bit troublesome for the students of a Microsoft 365 course where creating and protecting documents is part of the curriculum, in which the lab environments were pre-created months ago. You can read documents, but not create and edit them. In the case of the Office suite, when the activation fails, the applications go into a hobbled mode until they are properly activated. However, in certain cases, there may be a reason for an application to be on a machine legitimately, but not be activated. Microsoft Office 365 is a suite of applications that are ubiquitous, and to say that companies should test it before purchasing may be a stretch.

With that said, I am also a practical man who teaches a lot of courses, and am also a consultant who believes that companies should thoroughly test software before using it. If you are going to use a software, pay for the software.

I am a huge believer in software licensing.