> Tough for me to speak about embedded in general, but many companies are on vendor toolchains or paid compilers by choice, and it is the right choice to make g

> Tough for me to speak about embedded in general, but many companies are on vendor toolchains or paid compilers by choice, and it is the right choice to make given the tradeoffs involved. That's true in general. With paid licenses and especially subscriptions, you're not just getting the service, you're also entering a relationship with the provider. For companies, that often matters more than the service itself - especially when support is part of this relationship. That's one of many reasons companies like subscriptions. For individuals, that sucks. They don't need or want another relationship with some random party, that they now need to keep track of. The relationship has so much power imbalance that it doesn't benefit the individual at all - in fact, for most businesses, such customer is nothing more than a row in an analytics database - or less, if GDPR applies.