"...or for any reason whatsoever..."

I hate arrogance like this.

"...you agree to immediately destroy and/or erase the original and all copies of the SOFTWARE and any files created using the SOFTWARE and to discontinue their use and you will not retain or store the SOFTWARE or any files created using the SOFTWARE or any copies thereof, in any form or medium. "

Not that I'd be anxious to be the test case, but I'd bet this is unenforcable considering I bought the product, and they sold it to me, for the known purpose of creating my own code (or whatever), not create code for them. I'm guessing this would never fly in any reasonable courtroom. Maybe ActiveState's lawyers have been reading MS licenses for too long. (IANAL)

"...does it say what I think it says? "

Yes. The words mean what they mean and they made no mistakes in their verbiage. Their intended meaning is clear, regardless of whether anyone's ever tried to enforce such language, and in spite of any salesperson's attempt to make you believe it's 'standard' and 'everything will be ok'.

"How can I possibly get approval to use this tool... "

Really good question. Maybe it would A Good Thing to have your management call them and tell them they've lost your purchases over this. AS may never understand the consequences of this phrasing without calls like that.

In the last year or so I'm aware of several companies that have changed their purchasing decisions based on licensing language. One of them negotiated rewritten phrasing, but that gets expensive too.

Is it possible that companies doing these types of things think that most of their prospects won't read or care about licensing verbiage these days? Maybe they're right <sigh>.