All off-the-shelf purchased software, including drone autosofts, have the Copyright Protection and Registration program options standard. The first prevents you from copying the program, the second "phones home" to the software developer to register you as a user.
For most users, this is fine. They follow the rules, and don't really worry about The Man tracking their every move. As such, for their compliance, they get regular program patches and updates to keep it current.
Shadowrunners, however, usually don't like Corps watching over their virtual shoulders. So they crack it to remove the protection and registration. Or get someone to do it for them. Or get an Open Source version of the software. Or write the program themselves, if they're good enough.
The problem is without the protection and registration, the program will not get those nice automatic patches and updates. Which means in game terms, the program rating degrades over time. To counter this, the user can either manually patch the software if he's good enough, or he'll have to go and get patches from somewhere. Which means either extra time spent doing this every month, or extra money to pay someone to do it.
-k
