I was a consultant for 10 years and dealt with this with my clients (I now work for one of my prior clients).  It's true that you have to relinquish your license and repurchase if you ever need it again.  This has been their policy for years.  I'm not sure what they mean on the "4-5 year break even" part - we just told customers to expect to rebuy it at whatever the current cost at time of purchase was plus support fees again.  I usually encouraged them to evaluate their need for the module (tasks, setup etc) versus the benefit of using IA (Information Assistant) if they primarily only needed people to run reports an inquiries.  The IA module is much less expensive than the normal module costs.  Hope this helps.

Thanks Seth - that is helpful.

P. S.  Loved you on SNL.  :-)