Hobbyist Versions of Pro Tools

[Sal Ammoniac]

Saying that hobby licenses will not poach commercial sales is clearly not true.  There will be some number who cheat.

Yes, there will be people who cheat, but probably not many, and not enough to make a real difference to the bottom line. Any reputable company will not cheat like this.

That and if they're going to cheat like that, they might as well cheat and just pirate the whole program.

I figure most companies will buy the product in order to obtain support.

This. The two posts prior to your's make interesting points, but they're over thinking the issue. As you said, anyone who'd stoop to cheating by using hobbyist licenses probably wouldn't bother--they'd just pirate the program and pay nothing.

Real companies don't take chances by doing questionable things to get software--they do the right thing--because the consequences are not worth the risk.

Even pirated software (and I'm not advocating the practice) helps to get a vendor's name more well known and probably results in increased legitimate sales. It certainly didn't hurt that tiny, not very well-known company called MicroSoft back in the late 1970s.

[nctnico]

Even pirated software (and I'm not advocating the practice) helps to get a vendor's name more well known and probably results in increased legitimate sales. It certainly didn't hurt that tiny, not very well-known company called MicroSoft back in the late 1970s.

I'm convinced big companies spread cracked copies of their software in upcoming economies on purpose. At some point copyright laws will be enforced and they can start cashing in on a vendor lock-in. Better give away software for free than risking a competing low cost package being developed and becoming a standard. I've been in shops in Asia where you can buy every major software package (cracked) for a few dollars per CD/DVD.

[legacy]

I've been in shops in Asia where you can buy every major software package (cracked) for a few dollars per CD/DVD.

Yup, or a laptop preloaded with the software you need, for 100 USD 
Asia and Russia are on Copy-Left 

[aandrew]

Doesn't help me. I use the STM32F4 and F7 parts, not the F0 and L0.

I really don't understand why everyone flocks to Keil. Every time I've had to use their tools I've been left frustrated.

Give me CubeMX and a standard Makefile and GNU toolchain. I don't want the IDE, Eclipse is just a burden and additional layer of crap. I've got two editors I love (Sublime Text and vim), I've got gdb and sometimes use Segger's Ozone debugger. This takes care of a full 99% of my professional embedded software development tool needs which are AVR and ARM, including embedded ARM on Altera and Xilinx SoCs and radio SoCs such as Nordic and Cypress. I've even got the PIC tools (including flashing, but not debugging) working from the command line.

I keep looking at Atollic's offering; they seem to really be doing amazing things with ARM debugging, although until they come out with their cross platform toolset I will keep it at arms-length.

Chacon son gout, but embedded dev tools don't have to be expensive to be pro.

[mjs]

We're going with GNU toolchain because of continuous integration setup is a pain with commercial licenses. Now we're integrating hardware in the loop for testing things like device drivers and verify sleep current consumption for all changes on all hardware revisions.

Anyone else doing HIL+CI setups ?

[technix]

Even pirated software (and I'm not advocating the practice) helps to get a vendor's name more well known and probably results in increased legitimate sales. It certainly didn't hurt that tiny, not very well-known company called MicroSoft back in the late 1970s.

I'm convinced big companies spread cracked copies of their software in upcoming economies on purpose. At some point copyright laws will be enforced and they can start cashing in on a vendor lock-in. Better give away software for free than risking a competing low cost package being developed and becoming a standard. I've been in shops in Asia where you can buy every major software package (cracked) for a few dollars per CD/DVD.

Paraphrasing Bill Gates: If someone have to pirate software, I'd like to see it being ours (referring to Microsoft Windows and Office being pirated like crazy in China.)

During their free upgrade to Windows 10 period, they had a special "feature" for Chinese users: regardless whether your original copy of Windows 7/8.1 is genuine or pirated you are getting a free genuine upgrade license to Windows 10, tied to your PC's motherboard via digital rights (so it can survive you wiping and upgrading your hard drive.) Effectively it allowed users of pirated Windows 7/8.1 in China to whitewash their copy of Windows to a genuine copy of Windows 10 upon upgrading.

So I'd like to say that at least some software vendors do not disallow pirating in emerging economies, with the hope of locking the users into their ecosystem.

[yuzuha]

This. The two posts prior to your's make interesting points, but they're over thinking the issue. As you said, anyone who'd stoop to cheating by using hobbyist licenses probably wouldn't bother--they'd just pirate the program and pay nothing.

Real companies don't take chances by doing questionable things to get software--they do the right thing--because the consequences are not worth the risk.

Even pirated software (and I'm not advocating the practice) helps to get a vendor's name more well known and probably results in increased legitimate sales. It certainly didn't hurt that tiny, not very well-known company called MicroSoft back in the late 1970s.

The solution is write good software.   I pirated Wordperfect 4.something and loved it.  So, the Wordperfect corporation had a check on their desk for version 5.0 before it was even released.  ('course then it went down the sewers a few years later when Novell and then Corel bought it)   Do it shareware or have cheaper non-commercial versions that do not need internet checkups.

Wish they would do something though... I'm semi disabled, retired on a fixed income and there is no place around here to play school so any gear or software I manage to get is very dear to me.

[thm_w]

I just checked the latest SolidWorks eligibility for their Student version and I find that they've either made it more restricted or my past recollection that anyone could buy/use it for personal education was wrong.   So those who are unemployed or pursuing ongoing skill development / maintenance independently of work / school are out of luck unless they're in a full academic degree program ladder.  So if just taking a quick 1, 2, 5 day paid training class / seminar / workshop isn't enough for your needs then you're stuck without a good option short of something close to being a full time student taking enough units in enough different (even unrelated to one's technical needs/interests) classes in a semester to qualify for their "degree seeking program" restriction.
These companies ought to be as generous with the continuing education talent pool as they are with high schoolers since, even forgetting hobbyists, it can only benefit them to have people keep up / grow their skills. 

You worry too much IMO. If you are interested in learning the software, you will find a way to acquire it.

36 hours of solidworks training is $7-800 at local schools in my area, if you want to rigidly follow solidworks licensing rules, then thats your option.

[westfw]

I suspect a lot of companies would "cheat" "somewhat"; not so much not buying a copy, but not buying a copy for each engineer, or not getting the more expensive multi-seat licenses to cover everyone who uses it.   "We bought our official copy to do our production compiles, and another copy for Joe Senior, our top engineer.   The rest of you low-level employees should just use the freeware version."
(which is, in turn, because many of default site licenses are pretty sucky, and negotiating a non-sucky license is moderately difficult.)
(whether there would be any difference in profit for the SW company between this sort of cheating, and a negotiated user-friendly site license, is a separate question.

Related: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/eagle-forum/going-quot-for-profit-quot/td-p/6900000

[james_s]

Companies I've worked at were very careful to have enough properly licensed copies of software for everyone using it. They do get checked for this sort of thing.

More than once though I saw the protection dongle locked away in a cabinet with a crack applied to the software in use due to problems with the protection.

[nctnico]

More than once though I saw the protection dongle locked away in a cabinet with a crack applied to the software in use due to problems with the protection.

That is how I run my software. In some cases the original is still in it's shrink wrap. Dealing with registrations and getting/transferring licenses is just too much hassle.

[KL27x]

Seems to me that hobbiests prefer to spend more money on their toys. Pros will use w/e reliably gets the job done. In case of software, this is not true, though. We don't like paying for software, lol.

Heck, 1500 vs 150. I don't even care anymore about the writeoff. I own a company, but maybe I am going to buy the software license for my own personal hobby. Then magically it gets used for business? This feels now like a white lie, lol. How is anyone going to prove that?

It might be better if there was one fixed cost, low enough to entice many hobbiests to purchase. Heck, if it were cheap enough, you might hold several competitors software licenses at a time for slight differences here and there. I suppose for highly specialized software, this model is simply not feasible.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Heck, 1500 vs 150. I don't even care anymore about the writeoff. I own a company, but maybe I am going to buy the software license for my own personal hobby. Then magically it gets used for business? This feels now like a white lie, lol. How is anyone going to prove that?

Companies that stoop to this probably would just go all the way and outright pirate a tool rather than paying anything at all for it.

[james_s]

Seems to me that hobbiests prefer to spend more money on their toys. Pros will use w/e reliably gets the job done. In case of software, this is not true, though. We don't like paying for software, lol.

A hobbyist only has to justify a tool purchase to themselves, maybe their wife. Getting an employer to purchase a tool is often an uphill battle so if it's easier to get by with what is on hand than fight that battle, I'll get by with what I have.

[technix]

My employer hired me with the intention of letting me set up a FOSS-based workflow for him, so he can safely drop the licenses of Keli when the current ones expire.

I am bring them the toolset I have used on my private projects: Eclipse, GCC, OpenOCD and CMSIS-DAP. We do have a few broken J-Links in the office that I managed to fix so they are incorporated into the workflow too. That is the only non FOSS part of the tool chain.

[RedSpanner]

I've been using a hobbyist version of Mathematica through 3, maybe 4 versions... cost me $99 USD initially, but everytime I've upgraded, it has cost me a little more. The tool is fabulous for math-intensive stuff (RF work, information theory, other cool stuff), but it's worked out well for Wolfram (the publisher), too -- they've made ~$500 USD off me over 5-6 years, just so I can "scratch a math itch" for tech weenie stuff I was interested in...

Bottom line is, these "hobbyist sales" are generating incremental revenue for products whose main focus is in technically-challenging and high-value (financially-deep) applications. Since the kicker for many of these "hobbyist-grade" products is 'no technical support', the marginal cost of selling these products at a large discount to hobbyists is near zero $... The margin is probably north of 90%, so any incremental revenue goes right to the bottom line! Plus, the vendor gets the 'goodwill and familiarity' bonus as well!

Vendors who miss this opportunity are really missing out on something.

 

[legacy]

hobbyist version of Mathematica

why are you upgrading it? which is the reason?

[HSPalm]

TI clearly went down this path with CCS 7, deciding they're a hardware manufacturer, not a software studio.  A good move IMO. 

Bravo to TI. I suspect other companies don't do this because they consider the tools division a separate business unit that has to show a profit (or at least not too big a loss). They don't consider the offsetting increase in chip sales that may accrue from giving the tools away free.

Atmel (Microchip) and Microchip have both made free IDE with free compilers. ST at least lists the Open Source alternatives for IDEs alongside Keil and IAR at their webpage. I know it doesn't get as much support, nearly, but still they at least recognize it.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Atmel (Microchip) and Microchip have both made free IDE with free compilers. ST at least lists the Open Source alternatives for IDEs alongside Keil and IAR at their webpage. I know it doesn't get as much support, nearly, but still they at least recognize it.

Good for them. I encourage more vendors to go that route.

In the mean time, IMO the best option for hobbyists is Rowley CrossWorks for ARM. It's the full tool with nothing disabled or limited for USD$150. To me this is a bargain as everything just works out of the box and it's cross-platform too.

[technix]

Atmel (Microchip) and Microchip have both made free IDE with free compilers. ST at least lists the Open Source alternatives for IDEs alongside Keil and IAR at their webpage. I know it doesn't get as much support, nearly, but still they at least recognize it.

Good for them. I encourage more vendors to go that route.

In the mean time, IMO the best option for hobbyists is Rowley CrossWorks for ARM. It's the full tool with nothing disabled or limited for USD$150. To me this is a bargain as everything just works out of the box and it's cross-platform too.

I am still standing on GNU ARM Embedded toolchain under Eclipse CDT IDE. Fully open source, costs $0, have no restrictions, and you can get the full source code too.

[mrm2007]

http://www2.keil.com/stmicroelectronics-stm32/mdk
https://community.st.com/thread/34347-keil-ide-free-of-charge-of-stm32l0-and-stm32f0
http://www.st.com/en/development-tools/mdk-arm-stm32.html

Doesn't help me. I use the STM32F4 and F7 parts, not the F0 and L0.

Hi,

 Did you see SW4STM32 from ST? (Basically is Eclipse + GCC + ... in one package , for Windows+MAC OS X + Linux), It has a plugin from AC-6 Systems which is free for STM32 Series Software Development (even for commercial use if i remember correctly)
 
http://www.st.com/en/development-tools/sw4stm32.html
http://www.openstm32.org/HomePage