> but in the area of education and science, limiting access is holding back the progress of the entire human race.
Although I doubt Adobe and Microsoft did this out of altruism: By allowing piracy of their software for private use, it became widely used, and at work people wanted to continue using the software they knew -- this time paying for it.
Not only that, but in the case of MSVC/Visual Studio you have a talent feedback loop as well as a financial one. They need people to be pirating it or they'll have no windows developers in the future.
Visual Studio 2015 Professional is available in the meantime for free (as beer) under the name "Visual Studio Community 2015" for private developers and small companies:
They did the great move some years ago by first releasing the compiler part (MS VC++ 2000-something Toolkit) and then later the entire IDE. Having just the compiler part was enough to hook it up to Code::Blocks and ditch the pirated VC++ 6.0 I used before. Another great move was that the released free compiler part allowed for commercial use; some of my friends from amateur gamedev community used that to sell their productions. Such simple moves enabled teenagers to follow their passions, for many of whom it turned into jobs - Polish professional gamedev scene now has many names I recognize from the fun times of amateur creation.
Wasn't the C++ compiler already released as part of the Windows SDK or was that (including the C++ compiler in the Windows SDK) a step that Microsoft didn't take until later on?
I recall it was post-VC++ 6.0. It was big news for us hobby game developers back then, because we finally had another choice than between pirating VC++ 6.0 or dealing with DJGCC and Dev-C++.
Although I doubt Adobe and Microsoft did this out of altruism: By allowing piracy of their software for private use, it became widely used, and at work people wanted to continue using the software they knew -- this time paying for it.