Licenses are often temporary during initial setup (30-day "MiniSAP" or trial keys) and must be replaced by a permanent key obtained from the SAP Support Portal.
By using a generator, the modification happens "off the books." If the system crashes because a modified standard object conflicted with an upgrade, SAP Support will refuse to assist—or worse, charge premium rates to untangle the mess.
The license is stored in table TSTAR and governed by the (or local installation in older R/3 versions 4.6C, 4.7, ECC 5.0/6.0). The license key is generated by SAP’s proprietary algorithm based on:
SAP’s internal algorithm generates a unique string.
If you are in contract renewal negotiations, SAP can issue a via a customer ticket. Similarly, they can generate up to 5 object keys per year without an active maintenance contract for critical bug fixes.