That have made it difficult for many years. Buying old hardware, and you need/want to update the OS on it? Nope, can't do that without a CCIE or someone certified to download that image.. All while you're trying to learn CISCO on the gear. Now there is virtual which makes it easier, but still CISCO is a trap. Dont just learn cisco, learn them all. Extreme, Dell, Arista, Mellanox etc. Cisco syntax is poor vs the others imho.
Cisco smells money, they see their network as a service sub-brand Meraki pulling in tons of money from clients that don't want their network to brick.
I wish this would trigger a migration to other vendors that don't brick your hardware when you don't pay them for a license, eg: Ubiquiti, WatchGuard, etc.