Grandfather, I agree with you.

The OP should understand that it is not allowed to redistribute AS code.

Any Perl program that I write can be sent to anybody that I want.
But I cannot burn an image of my AS environment + my software onto a DVD.
AS requires that users download the AS Perl environment from the AS website.

There are some nice things that AS provides.
I am ready to start a new Perl project and I have to remember some things.
There is an AS command that will create an XML file of all my installed libraries. I update the Perl version and then run that XML file. In theory, everything is upgraded to the latest versions. However, I know that one library is not available in the current AS version...Bummer. But there are ways to fix this problem .

Active State is not completely free, there are some "yeah, but's".

I have a legacy commercial license for the AS Perl Dev Kit. I am not sure what Active State's new licensing policy means for me. In general, it does not sound good.

Update: I don't know how to do the AS update procedure with CPAN and Strawberry? If I update my AS and then create this module XML file, you download the latest AS version and then run my XML module file and BOOM, you have a clone of my AS environment. You won't find some .pl program that I send you that fails due to an uninstalled module. I have found this very useful with my working partners.