[GuB-42]

"Kids in their bedrooms" had cracked versions of MSVC.

Even at my school, I don't remember a single student paying for any software. Teachers were obviously aware of that and while they didn't encourage piracy openly, when they showed something on a high priced software, "go ahead and get the cracked version if you don't already have it" was almost implied.

We also worked with Linux and free software a lot, that's just to say that price never was an issue, because we didn't pay.

It is debatable but I think publisher were happy with that situation, students wouldn't pay in any way, they might as well learn on tools that their future employers will have to pay for.

Things have changed. Most notably, the primary way of monetization is online services now. Software is often given away for free and piracy is either pointless (because free software) or much harder (because a large part of it is online).

As for charging for dev tooling, yes, it is hard, because charging for software is hard. That is, unless you have an online service component. That's a reason why "collaborative" tools are so popular now.

[pmiller2]

At my school, about 10 years ago, any student who was either a CS major or taking any CS class got free access to full versions of pretty much every MS product except enterprise versions. That’s full versions of Windows, .Net, SQL Server, Office, you name it. There was no need for anyone to pirate anything.

[lmm]

You have to jump through a bunch of hoops, if you even know about what's there. You have to make sure the right thing is registered in the right way, and if something's broken down in the link between your university's login setup and MS's setup then good luck getting someone to fix it as a student. It's actually a huge difference in practice from what you get with open-source (or piracy): download the thing and run it, that's it.

[pmiller2]

No, not really. I remember it being dead simple when I was there.

[znpy]

It's a pointless argument. You had access to all the software with a regular student license, it was obviously never meant for any production workload and never meant to be covered with any kind of support.

Since piracy was/is the norm, you might as well provide a few version.

[albrewer]

I remember the process as 1) Submit my .edu email 2) Click link in email 3) Pay $50 4) Get keys to ALL the things.

[roytries]

All you need(ed) was an e-mail address that ended in @myuniversity.tld and use that in the registration at the shop.

[tonfreed]

Yeah, we had access to DreamSpark around 10-15 years ago and it was pretty awesome.

I was very much a Linux person at the time, but I could still appreciate all the free stuff MS lobbed at students.

[judge2020]

Adobe CC apps used to be so easy to pirate, but recently Adobe has been going hard on anti-piracy detections (I imagine it is indeed getting abused by some businesses somewhere). I was under the assumption that a majority of their mindshare was from high school kids learning on cracked adobe then asking for licensed creative cloud apps at work.

[katbyte]

I’ve also noticed the rise in Adobe alternatives over the last few years so must be working

[vagrantJin]

This times 100. The open source alternatives are ridiculously good. Figma and Blender are the ones I use and we've made some extensions for specific jobs painlessly.

The free stack is even catching up where paid software used to excel - modern, usable UI. We're happy to drop a few hundred on donations.

[jameshart]

Figma is not open... not open source, or even file format.

[Swenrekcah]

I would never pay for dev tooling as a SaaS because it would put me completely at the mercy of the provider.

I’d be happy to, and do, pay for some dev tools that I get to own for life. The Jetbrains model is really a great match I think for both the company and the customer.

[bitwize]

For me it was my dad's friend who worked as an enterprise Microsoft dev, and would give me his old MSDN CDs when he was finished using them. So I got Windows NT, Visual Studio, and complete API documentation -- even Windows 95 when it came out.