Hex-rays is moving to a subscription model
As alternative tools like Ghidra or even some of the cheaper options like Hopper become more popular, I suspect Hex-Rays recognizes that corporate licenses are their bread and butter. From a business perspective it makes sense to squeeze as much out of these companies as they can get away with. The subscription costs are only a fraction of an annual salary.<p>Unfortunately this leaves the hobbyist and individuals behind. ~$1K&#x2F;year isn&#x27;t out of the realm of what I pay for other tools, but it&#x27;s really hard to justify it when I can open Ghidra and get 95% of the way there without the subscription model.<p>IDA really is great for handling edge cases and obscure architectures, but I hope this last switch-up by Hex-Rays pushes even more developer attention toward improving the open-source alternatives.