And this is a reason, why I take care in archiving installers, license keys, serials, etc for every application I use. Learned my lesson some 25 years ago, when there wasn't Internet to try to find the installer and email archive to hunt for licenses.
Good point - and I do have a registry of installers and serial numbers for my crucial development software. However, I have literally hundreds of audio plugins and utilities that are tedious to track. End of the day, it is an admin cost to maintain such an archive - and some days I think it is far easier to outsource that archival maintenance and recording to a third party... such as an App Store... :)
NB: A lot of my audio software is licenced via an iLok device. Whilst I HATED the idea of a 'dongle' like an iLok before, this hardware upgrade has made me appreciate the fact that I didn't have to worry about re-licencing all of my audio production software the used the iLok either.