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Well ... depending on the usecase it _is_ a waste of money. Libreoffice, Gimp and Inkscape are perfectly viable alternatives to MS and Adobe products if you are a casual user.

That said, I don't believe anybody who has used the 'real' office/photoshop/etc is easily able to go back to a 'lesser' alternative, but that's mostly due to sunken cost and lock in ... but, I don't think a casual user will make good use of the better features in the better software.

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I think those are good arguments for allowing teenagers to pirate software. If you learn how to use photoshop then you’re unlikely to relearn GIMP. And companies are less likely to pirate software. (Though I have heard of some small ones that do)

>If you learn how to use photoshop then you’re unlikely to relearn GIMP.

We currently see something related to this in the Pharmaceutical industry. There are a lot of statisticians/programmers that learn R or python in university, while most large-pharma companies are using SAS. There is a movement within the industry to pivot or try to pivot to R due to the scarcity of SAS programmers or/and the cost of teaching new employees a new programming language.

If SAS would have more accessible trainings/certifications I am sure R would never even be considered.

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