[stevenaleach]

It's been more than a decade since I paid for any software, Mathlab for Linux. It was a requirement for a class I was taking - Ironically, I never did have to use it. Octave proved more than adequate. Before that... well... I think the only other software I ever paid for was a shareware game (Commander Keen) when I was a kid in the early 90's. Generally I'm always surprised when I hear a reference to commercial software thinking "That's still a thing?!"

[WilliamEdward]

Commercial software succeeds when the product sells itself as the best possible version. Looking at macOS, where you're forced to buy a legitimate copy to engage with all the features, you might think "why not just use a free OS" but that sells commercial software short of all the other things it offers other than just "this is software you've seen before".

I do believe it's closed-minded to think all alternatives to commercial software are exactly the same as the commercial version and therefore there's no reason to buy commercial. Paid software still has a reason to exist and many customers to bat.

[slap_shot]

You find paying for software to be unusual? How can that be?

[stevenaleach]

Having not run DOS/Windows since 1995 I haven't needed to. I can't imagine dealing with an OS without the kind of enormous and comprehensive software repository of Debian or pretty much any distro.

[slap_shot]

Right, but there’s a massive global economy of trillions dollars of software being bought every year. The people that run this site invest in companies that sell software. I just can’t comprehend how you wonder if buying software “is still a thing.”

[WilliamEdward]

Are these really the best possible version of the software? You can be an engineer and get away with using a hacked-together clone of some popular software program, but is the money really going to set you back farther than a good copy will set you forward?