"Try it for free"... nope. Languages should be free, period, not free for trial.
It might be best to compare the Wolfram Language to natural languages like English instead of programming language. The English language is not just a set of grammar, but also a rich collection of vocabularies that need to be compiled and maintained, and perhaps a rich collection of literature that need to be maintained and expanded to help learners understand the language.
Wolfram spent quite some time and resources to collect data for his Wolfram Alpha, and his new "language". It makes sense to charge money for such efforts.
Based on an accounting of the work involved, it's reasonable to charge, but based on the options available (and the relative unprovenness of the Wolfram Language), it's also perfectly reasonable for people like the parent to insist on free languages only. It's what Wolfram's competing with, at least in the view of the world where it's not singlehandedly "redefin[ing] the process of programming"...
Of course not, its a New Kind of Programming Language.
I just don't think the language will thrive as well as it could if the number of users is limited by a financial barrier. Sure, it will have users, and sure, they will find it useful, but a lot of its potential will go unrealized.
You could make the same argument with tools, so why are languages different? I think because they are more foundational.. other tools are built IN them not just using them. They become a substrate. Or not, if they're not widely used.
What about the computer itself. I don't want to argue one way or the other but the hierarchy:
Hardware (non-free)
OS (sometimes-free)
Programming language (mostly-free)
Programs (sometimes-free)
They both have a cost.
As an example, if tomorrow I invented a machine that made unlimited free copies of soybeans and distributed those copies for ~$0 to any internet connected location on earth, the market value of soybeans would very quickly approach zero.
Whether or not my machine is illegal would be quite immaterial to the laws of economics, which would continue to propagate information about supply and demand through prices so long as my machine was working.
Of course, the same is true of corn and also intangible goods like massages [0]. By induction you might claim that the story for mp3's is the same.
[0] If you find a machine that gives unlimited massages at a distance, let me know immediately
Nonono. The laws of supply and demand you're talking about only obtain under conditions of perfect competition, where goods are perfect substitutes for each other - commodity markets being the closest real-world example. By this argument, the price of opera should fall to zero because there's an oversupply of EDM and pop music. But if you want to listen to opera, chances are that you're not going to be satisfied by a new Katy Perry tune.
Who should take on that cost?
I countered that very cheap hardware would have to be free, following that logic.
Who are you to say what is cheap and what is not? Not to mention that orders of magnitude greater than almost zero is potentially still almost zero.
There are good reasons some people want to steer clear of any vendor lock-in. If there can be comparable open implementations, I'll use those. If there can't be, then the prospect is that much more alarming.
I think the reason this isn't done is because Wolfram Research would have to really take responsibility for calling this thing a programming language. They'd have to publish their sources or at least the requirements for what qualifies as a valid source. They'd also have to publish their curating methods so that anyone with access to their sources and the language specification could produce identical results to identical source code. Basically, their position would be no more privileged than Microsoft's with respect to CSharp and the .NET framework. I don't think Wolfram Research wants to face a Mono-like competitor for their language and that is why portraying the language as some general purpose tool for everyone rings hollow.
The same way that 'Mathematica' also has/is a language, but also a platform.
You can write whatever code you want, but you can only run it on their hosted platform which is not free to operate.
Arrangements in which you or others have previously engaged are not relevant, at least without an argument.
> I just don't think the language will thrive as well as it could if the number of users is limited by a financial barrier.
If this is actually your argument you should have lead with it. But it's not like Wolfram is new to the PL business, Mathematica has been pay since it was distributed on floppies and it has a large community. Making it free might make a stronger, larger community, but if you want to convince Wolfram to do that you'll need to propose a way to make up the lost revenue.
Though, arguably, the type of stuff Mathematica is used for is already sufficiently niche that this is less of a concern.
It seems to me that other people shouldn't demand the results of somebody else's efforts be released in any way other than the creator desires. Feel free to gather the data yourself, build a platform of your own, and then give it away, but the arrogance of expecting somebody else to do that for you is nothing short of shocking to me.
But no, the language is not open source, and that is unlikely to change in the future.
IE You can use it for free forever, but just not too much each month. Pay for more CPU time after you hit your limit or wait until next month to get more free time.