This is a nice example of what a logician calls a false cause: your conclusion (definition of outrageous) isn't supported by your premise (how much you used to pay for kit).
It's also a straw man, since I was talking about an OS developer wanting to publish their software, and you're attempting to sink it by portraying it as referring to a consumer wanting free stuff.
The subject of your conclusion, 'current generations', is also so vague as to be redundant. Current generations who are alive? Generations of 21st century? Of modernity? Of the West?
Like 1000 euros per year for a MSDN Professional license, or the required certification from several vendors that have to be renewed every couple years.
You don't need to spend €1000 to develop for Windows. Visual Studio Community Edition [1] is free to use for individuals, even for developing paid applications. Even if you're running a multi-developer business, Visual Studio Professional can be had for far less than €1000.
What you're referring to is the top-tier MSDN subscription, which is something that very few organizations will require.
Yeah, but lets not forget that community also is relatively recent, having replaced the Express editions, which were worthless beyond learning purposes, as per license.
Recently tried to compile scintilla in visual studio, but gave up figuring out how to tune all settings in the IDE and compiled with nmake instead, the make file was very transparent and hackable with everything in plain sight.
Or having to pay Red Hat for support to get access to their KB, get updates, and pay separate licenses if you want any of their premium software offerings. Or having to shell out for console dev kits and game engines. And the embedded software world is even worse.
The exception is being able realistically develop for a platform without little/no expense. People really are spoiled by FOSS tooling.
That the exact purpose of all the FOSS tooling -- to make tools free, so more things can get created? Make all FOSS paid and enforce the licensing and you will bankrupt a lot of small commercial companies that rely on them too. Then really a few giants will remain.
It's also a straw man, since I was talking about an OS developer wanting to publish their software, and you're attempting to sink it by portraying it as referring to a consumer wanting free stuff.
The subject of your conclusion, 'current generations', is also so vague as to be redundant. Current generations who are alive? Generations of 21st century? Of modernity? Of the West?
I'm afraid this is not a very good HN post.