Hex Rays need to take a look at how JetBrains (IntelliJ) handled the same problem. Initially, most students and home users I knew used a cracked copy because t

Hex Rays need to take a look at how JetBrains (IntelliJ) handled the same problem. Initially, most students and home users I knew used a cracked copy because there was no way in hell any of the students I knew had a spare $500 to pay for an IDE. JetBrains seemed to realize this so first, they made a "self purchase" option that was half the price (or less) and belonged solely to the developer that bought it, with the caveat that they had to use their own funds. It could be used commercially too - this was the option to take if your boss couldn't be convinced to buy you a commercial license and you still wanted to use it legally. Next, they made their tools free for people working on open source projects. Then they made a version that had almost all the features available for free (it may have originally been only for non-commercial use but it's fine to use commercially now). Then they worked with Google to make their free tool the default for Android development, which added many more users. Then they switched to a monthly licensing scheme that was about $12 a month for a single product (while retaining the ability to outright buy a copy if you wanted to). Almost everything that IntelliJ does is possible with open source competitors, but I still pay for it because of the level of polish they apply to each feature and the intuitiveness of each feature. I think that if a $12/month copy was available initially, the number of cracked copies being used would have gone down dramatically. EDIT: Photoshop did something similar. NO ONE I knew that used it for home use had a real license because it was so damn expensive, but I know plenty of people paying $15/month or so for access.