Would the big for-profit businesses actually risk legal action from Agilent by disguising themselves as hobbyists just to get the hobbyist price and save a few thousand bucks? It has been my experience that the average business doesn't even risk pirating windows, and that's about as mundane as it gets for piracy I think.
I guess I'm assuming that the businesses would play it safe and pay the normal price for their features so Agilent still gets their big bucks as usual, then the hobbyists could get to have some of those same features at a much more realistic price which would then be even more money in Agilent's pockets, and we would all live happier ever after. Hypothetically the bulk of Agilent's sales wouldn't change at all, but they'd have a new source of income from hobbyists buying options at hobbyist-only prices.
It seems that the bottom line questions would be: how many businesses would reduce Agilent's income by cheating and taking the non-commercial price, and how many hobbyists would increase Agilent's income by bringing them sales which they otherwise wouldn't have made at the astronomically high commercial price, and which way would that end up tipping the scales?
I guess I'm just being naive as I don't really have any exposure to the corporate world, but I see a lot of hobbyists out there from my vantage point who are all eager to finally have some of the conveniences which have thus far been unobtainable. We're almost all willing to take what we want as long as no harm is done, but we'd very much prefer having the option to give something back for it in return.
You forgot about the administration cost of trying to enforce all this, just like education licenses for things take a lot of effort to enforce.
If it was as easy as ticking a box on the online order form ("I'm a hobbyist") and you instantly get your discount of freebie, then you can bet your bottom dollar everyone would be ticking the box.
This is an age old argument and can be said about almost every product and market like this.
It is much easier to do, and to find compelling arguments for non-physical products like EDA software, but in the end it's the same argument, what do you provide to who and for how much?
The idea of giving all the bells and whistles in a hardware product to a hobbyist is questionable. Because then when (if) they move into the professional circles, will they upgrade that gear? Where is the upgrade path? They already got the top-notch product at a give-away price.
But at the end of the day, Agilent's market has and always will be professionals. There is likely very little business case for them to give special deals to target hobbyists.
Dave.
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