I think their original pricing scheme for the first 5 or 6 versions of Delphi was fine. The cheapest version was just $100, which even a student could buy by saving for a few weeks (get them hooked while young, etc :-P). The versions that added features focused on enterprises were more expensive but these wouldn't be needed by a lot of people (a lot of Delphi programmers were making small shareware utilities instead of big database applications).
I have a "Delphi for Kids" book which included a free version of the lowest Delphi tier. And yes, sure, I guess you can do the same with the current community version, but it does show how broadly Delphi was aimed and received.
Which is the sad thing. Even if Idera were to change their tack, it wouldn't matter anymore, as there's no broad appeal for a "desktop full stack" solution anymore.
Right now, it doesn't matter anyway. They're in that enterprise tier along with commercial Smalltalks and APLs, even if they'd give away everything for free tomorrow it wouldn't change the world of computing.
After a while they got greedy and fucked up that scheme, moving stuff that had been in the Professional edition (most importantly, client-server DB connections) into Enterprise, and other stuff (three-tier app development) from Enterprise into a new Architect edition. And then steady substantial price hikes for all editions from version to version. Shot themselves in the foot, AFAICS.
