June 04, 2011, 11:57:50 pm
By not offering a stand-alone student version of your software, you may not know it, but you are encouraging extensive piracy of your software at schools across the world. Any architecture student can let you know, companies who don't offer very low cost student versions and up having pirated versions of their software proliferated and shared across the world from portable hard drive to portable hard drive.
Software companies that provide inexpensive student versions (Rhinoceros, Sketchup, etc...) end up getting students money and future business. I have no problem purchasing Rhinoceros for 200 dollars US, as do so many students, but none I know of can afford 800 euros for Lumion.
I already know pirated versions of your software are traveling throughout many architecture schools in many countries, and theres nothing you can do to stop this except to offer an inexpensive version to students. But for not, architecture students every where will thank you for forcing them to not pay you for your software.
