In programmable equipment where it is either undesirable or impractical to construct the program code with embedded licensing decision points, the program is constructed by hard-coding the license rights into the program code at program build time. License permissions are obtained from a sales order system and used to produce a code image, or select a pre-existing, pre-validated code image which contains only those features, facilities, or capabilities allowed by the applicable license rights for that particular sales order and on that particular programmable unit. Functionality of the device is updated as appropriate by use of a bootloader on the device for installation of a firmware image. In this way, the invention overcomes the technical limitations inherent in such devices by reprogramming the device to alter device functionality in keeping with rights and privileges added or deleted therefrom with regard to software installed thereon.