We can’t say with absolute certainty since there remain a lot of open questions in terms of exactly what the eventual solution will look like, but I can say that it is absolutely our intention to provide a means of activating the software offline without requiring the machine itself to connect to the Internet.
One way in which it might work (and I stress that this is only one possibility) is that you would generate some kind of hardware identification key on the air-gapped machine on which you want to run the software, copy that onto removable storage, and walk it over to another computer that can connect to the Internet. You’d then use that hardware identification key to generate a software authorization that you copy back onto the removable storage, and walk it back over to the air-gapped computer, and install the authorization. That computer would then be authorized to run the software for the duration of that license. Precisely how long that authorization would be able to last without being renewed (a year? longer?) and exactly what that process would look like are open questions at this stage.
But please know that we are well aware that our products are used in environments like these, and we have no intention of leaving any of our customers out in the cold.
For the avoidance of doubt, this would not be the method required by most users, since the vast majority of users connect their computers to the internet periodically, but those users for whom it is impractical to connect their computers to the internet will not be left behind.