The reasoning might be to get them used to your software/business/... to have them as customers later on when they will pay the full price. For example Autodes

The reasoning might be to get them used to your software/business/... to have them as customers later on when they will pay the full price. For example Autodesk [1] allows students to get licenses for nearly all products for free but doesn't allow commercial use. Once they go into the business they have a few years of experience with Autodesk software and will probably stick to it. This is the same for fogbugz (who also have a free startup edition - 2 ppl limit) and others. [1] http://students.autodesk.com/ http://students.autodesk.com/