It's only a "disgrace" because you still believe the BS at face value. All of these licensing schemes are self (the organization running them) serving rackets

It's only a "disgrace" because you still believe the BS at face value. All of these licensing schemes are self (the organization running them) serving rackets to various extents. Subtract a thousand from all the dates, call it a guild, sprinkle some nobility into the org chart. That'll make it all make sense. Same shit, different day. Of course they jumped at the chance to charge the same for less. At the time it didn't look like there was a serious downside. "Everyone" was doing it. And to some extent that forced their hand. If you're running a licensing racket and you don't stay up to date with the rest of the licensing rackets and your license becomes relatively a worse value for whatever the upside is then supply will be constrained, prices will go up, perhaps enough to make people not well versed in you trade ask tough questions like "why are these people licensed in this manner" that could be a serious threat to the status quo.