One of my adopted "kids" I taught years ago picked this up at 17. He is 26, now. He "borrowed" the software to start (fair enough; it was a friend's license and not used at the same time), and didn't pay for a copy of Blender until he had a career path in mind and used Blender regularly.
A monthly thing makes no sense; just letting hobbyists dabble until they are in a place to pay used to be a lot more normal. They ought to make the entry for paying a bit less heartburn-inducing, though.
Are you confusing Blender with some other software? Blender is free and open source software. People donate to it because they 1) want to support the project and 2) have the money. If you don't have the money you just don't donate.
> A monthly thing makes no sense; just letting hobbyists dabble until they are in a place to pay used to be a lot more normal. They ought to make the entry for paying a bit less heartburn-inducing, though.
Thats exactly what they do. They dont charge at all even if they do make loads of money.
You must be thinking of some other software, Blender is free, and has been for a long time.
You must be thinking about a different software.
>borrowed the software
>it was a friend's license
>didn't pay for a copy of Blender
just for the record, everyone can download, for free, Blender from https://www.blender.org/download/ for Win, MacOS or Linux