

Ask HN: Why is it so difficult to buy academic software outside of a college? - bandrami

I don&#x27;t just mean &quot;expensive&quot;, I mean, &quot;how many #$%@ing hoops do I have to jump through even for a commercial license?&quot;<p>So, I have a project I just won a bid on which requires some pretty heavy number crunching. I&#x27;m going to do the prototyping in R, which I know like the back of my hand, but I need a more popular language to hand it back to the client in. They&#x27;ve said they&#x27;ll accept Wolfram, Matlab, or Maple.<p>Fair enough. I used all of those in grad school, and I more or less know their strengths and weaknesses, and really any of them would be fine for the job at hand (as would R, as would Octave, as would...)<p>Here&#x27;s the thing. I simply want, as an individual, to buy a license for normally-academic software to use commercially, and <i>it&#x27;s a frigging nightmare</i>.<p>No, I don&#x27;t want to leave you my number so you can call me later. No, I don&#x27;t want to find a local re-seller. I want to state my license needs, buy a license, and use the software as advertised.<p>(I admit I&#x27;m kind of in a weird position because I&#x27;m a US citizen living in India, so web stores assume I need Indian licenses but my visa precludes me from buying them. Still: this shouldn&#x27;t be this hard, should it?)<p>I ended up going with Wolfram because they actually just let me buy a commercial license. An expensive one, but this contract makes up for it and I&#x27;m sure I can drum up another one in the next two years. But this really is stupid. Is the &quot;contact for pricing&quot; really just a &quot;how much money can we squeeze from you?&quot; thing?
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detaro
At least for me in Germany Matlab also shows a normal webshop with prices and
a shopping cart. I didn't check what happens after account creation though.

A VPN to the US might help with the other issue (although I wonder how a visa
can block you from buying software?)

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GFK_of_xmaspast
What's so hard about leaving a number or talking to a local re-seller?

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bandrami
Why the hell should I have to talk to someone to buy software?

As far as the resellers: why would I deliberately insert a middleman in here?
I'm talking directly to the producer.

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GFK_of_xmaspast
Getting mad at me isn't going to solve the problem.

