Comment by steamrolled
3 days ago
The complaints about licensing seem a bit weird given that the company actually accommodates hobbyists. They have a $100-something perpetual home license that doesn't require internet access.
Most other vendors of niche "pro" software just give the middle finger to hobbyists and want you to pony up thousands of dollars for an annual subscription.
I think it's perfectly OK to say "I don't need this, open-source tools work for me". Just like you can use KiCad instead of Cadence for PCB design. But getting angry at Mathworks for wanting money from commercial users seems weird.
I'm frustrated that they push their product on undergrad engineering classes so heavily. Except for a few poorly taught weeks of C++, most of my classmates never leaned anything else. Admittedly, Matlab is a very good product for modeling and learning about controls, but they use this advantage to make sure all the fresh undergrads only know how to program in their product.
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