[oneweekwonder]

you get what you pay for, comparing commercial to open source software is not fair.

One try to sell you something, the other had an idea for a language he started to work on over the holidays.

[ptman]

There were free delphi personal and explorer editions to get you hooked. And Delphi used to be quite affordable back in the day

[pjmlp]

First current generation of developers needs to be willing to pay for their tooling, if they want to get something better than Bazaar quality.

[badsectoracula]

The fact that there are tiny shops like Xojo that make completely proprietary and niche languages and compilers show that there are developers that are willing to pay for their tools.

[pjmlp]

Indeed and I would be quite curious about their customer demographics and target platforms.