Comment by kevincox

Kind of. But where does it stop. Looking at a 24 cent license in isolation does sound silly. But what about when you add up Windows, h265, h264, mp3, aac, HDMI, ... You can't throw in every single feature into a laptop because it is cheap individually. Eventually they add up. Not to mention that in addition to per-unit fees lots of these have required memberships and certification which may add up, especially on lower volume products.

IMHO the fact that this wasn't visible on any product page was pretty awful, especially when this was a near globally included feature before. Maybe in an ideal world the customer would be able to pick which licenses they want individually when purchasing the device (or add them on at a later time). But that is beyond the knowledge of most consumers and has other downsides.

So while I do consider this choice to be pretty silly. I do find it hard to draw the line of at what point it is clearly ridiculous.