[ThrustVectoring]

>I agree that price discrimination can be a useful thing, but question the idea that only very large or wealthy companies should pay anything at all.

Because the more developers use a piece of software, the more valuable being able to use the software is. It's a classic network effect. Being able to write your commercial web app in Ruby on Rails is more valuable than being able to write it in a functionally equivalent framework with much fewer users of the software. This is straight from being able to hire developers familiar with RoR, access Q&A discussions, use third-party RoR tooling, etc.

Large companies tend to not be early adopters anyways, and they have the fattest checkbooks to raid for the value you're supplying, so it gets the most financial gain for the adoption loss you're causing.

[h34t]

I can see how that is true for some kinds of software. For many examples, network effects don't matter.

The first license I can remember paying for was Metafizzy's 'Isotope', a jQuery layout plugin. Great documentation and performance. I can't remember the price at the time, maybe $40 (now it ranges from $25 - $320). It was totally worth it, I was making money and clients were happy.

https://isotope.metafizzy.co/license.html