Given how much R&D expense Thread Group members have invested over the years developing its IP and the commercial value developers get from building on it, compared to, say, Apple's iOS APIs that developers can build on, it's interesting to consider the proportionality of Thread's annual licensing (USD 7500) being 75x Apple's dev license (USD 100).
Either one of these is expensive or one of these is cheap.
Well, Apple’s R&D expenses are amortised over a lot more developers paying their Apple tax.
Most specialist stuff is like this. For example, Braille displays and equipment for blind people is outrageously expensive compared to most consumer electronics. But the price tag makes sense because of how few units they sell. So it takes a higher markup on each unit to make money. Solidworks is simpler and more expensive than Windows because it has orders of magnitude fewer users.
the solution to your false dilemma is that they are both unconscionably high, and additionally they are both unconscionable because you are at the mercy of the vendor
> Either one of these is expensive or one of these is cheap.
I'm unable to downvote this insane take so you get an angry reply instead.
This is the dumbest thing I've read today^1. Charging someone to use knowledge and understanding is insane. Here let me teach you how to do this, now if you ever do anything like this, fuck you pay me? What?!
Both charges are insane. The thread group could sell hardware implementations, or software libraries, that's an ethical way to fund Apple does sell access to it's platform. The extra fees for IP, what essentially is just understanding and know how is so stupid. And society would benefit greatly if everyone stopped pretending like thought crimes were convictable.
^1: which sounds meaningful until account that I've been up for 30m max
Either one of these is expensive or one of these is cheap.