[flohofwoe]

Autodesk tried that from time to time. AFAIK as a student you can still get a free Maya, and there also was a very cheap (but massively stripped down) version for indie game devs. But there was always one or another string attached.

IMHO what really killed Maya wasn't necessarily Blender itself, but Autodesk's strategy of first becoming a defacto monopolist in the area of commercial 3D software and then tightening the subscription screws on their existing users. Of course that strategy doesn't work when there's a free alternative to migrate to.

[terribleperson]

From what I recall, the strings were substantial. The student version of Maya had a bunch of features disabled, to the point where you couldn't follow tutorials with it.

They might as well not have bothered.

This was years ago, so I may have misremembered.

[sbuk]

Both the education and indie versions are full versions. The educational version can only be licensed for a year and can only be relicensed a set number of times. The indie version is restricted solely based on income. If the licensee (studio or individual) makes <= 100000 USD per year, then they can use the indie version. There may be slightly different file formats for each.

[flohofwoe]

I remember that at one point there was a Maya LT version which only allowed polygon modelling and some limited animation features, and which didn't allow loading plugins (except a small number of whitelisted plugins). Maybe I confused that with the indie/student license.