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by riffraff 5029 days ago
wasn't the academic world one of the places where tools _were_ sold at a high price? I am thinking matlab, mathematica, derive etc.
1 comments

Notice that those are tools which specialize in specific domains (e.g. linear algebra), not just a general purpose programming language. And those tools are even higher priced without the academic discount.

No one has ever built a significant business on a new general-purpose programming language. It doesn't seem to be due to the relative lack of IP protection on languages either. It may be that it's simply not a problem worth solving, there's no solution worth marrying a vendor over, or there are too many language designers.