alt Hacker NewsI literally explained the thinking that the free builds on Linux aren't worth it. If you've ever shipped production software, you'd know this. Just because there's a free build available for Windows doesn't mean it costs the company $0 to release the free build. It's a lot of extra time and QA for each variant of a release. There might be many differences between the Windows and Linux builds, such as the Linux builds require proprietary 3rd party code with royalties, and they chose not to eat that cost.
There's no bait and switch. It's just people expecting things for free, as always, when this was never an open source project.
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This ignores that their revenue comes from selling chips. The software enables that. No software, no chip sales. This can only have a negative impact on their sales.
> It's a lot of extra time and QA for each variant of a release.
In Vivado, it's the same release for the free and expensive builds on both Linux and Windows. It's just a question of the installed license file/license limits.
> such as the Linux builds require proprietary 3rd party code with royalties, and they chose not to eat that cost.
This seems unlikely for a multitude of reasons.