> happily pay Autodesk their stupid $600 a year because I get that much value out of the application and then some.

Yes, you will, but big picture: eventually the software will die.

Software isn't just a product, it's an extension of education and expression. Using paid-for commercial software is risky.

What happens is young, aspiring professionals get taught that software, and then it's ripped from their hands because of the price. A lot of these young professionals give up or, more likely, switch to OS alternatives. And they make up the industry of the future. Eventually, the commercial product is pushed out because it can't keep up.

But even if this doesn't happen, the product still dies. Because commercial software is ultimately held hostage. The BEST CASE scenario is you're eventually bled dry and squeezed. The common scenario is that the software disappears or isn't popular anymore, and you've lost hundreds of hours of skills.

This even happens in dev spaces.

If you chose COM+ for an application, you fucked up. You're stuck with it and it's painfully behind, well, everything.

Or maybe you were seduced by how cool Oracle is. And it was... 20 years ago. Now, it's not a competitive database. But you're stuck paying for it. Had you just used MySQL or Postgres from the beginning, this wouldn't have happened.

And then flash. Oh flash. Great technology, but it doesn't matter. The world moves on. If you chose flash for your website, you fucked up.

And now 3D max. I give it 10 years. Blender is already ahead of it and all the professionals of tomorrow have jumped ship.