I'm not even sure what virtue you're trying to signal here. Just because someone used the limited funds they had available to obtain the software and educational resources they were interested in, they've exercised some sort of inappropriate privilege?
Isn't that the whole idea behind college? Spend money to learn cool stuff?
Ok, I'll spell it out. Presenting the idea that MuJoCo having a license fee rather than being free is better, not worse, or even that the difference doesn't matter because "well, I paid for stuff" is the inappropriate part of the privilege. Given a choice between "I can learn X but I need to spend significant money on it" and "I can learn X for free", with everything else equal arguing for the former is exclusionary.
with everything else equal arguing for the former is exclusionary.
Sure. But who argued for that? They merely pointed out that they considered this particular physics engine worth spending money on. The implication was that because money is typically limited for a college student, the software must really be worthwhile. The implication was not "LOL, you must be broke and can't afford good software."
The implication j was responding to was "if you really cared, a mere few hundred dollars wouldn't matter because you'd be able to find the money." If you don't read that into the message chain, fine, but I do.
Well, if you're working to pay your rent, bills, and food expenses, and you're only working part time (because you're a full time undergraduate student), you may not have a lot left over to pay for software licenses.
which is precisely the reason I went with linux: so I could maximize my hardware resources while eliminating license costs. By not buying whatever MS compiler in those days, I was able to max out my workstation with 32MB RAM.
Working in undergrad and having thousands left over after paying for food and a place to sleep certainly can't be assumed to be. That's where my pay went.
I was very fortunate to not have to pay tuition or board, but if I had to, I wouldn't have spent my money to pay for that (I would have taken out loans) and still spent my money on RAM.
