I actually like this pattern. I mean, as a (not so highly paid) developer who also does a lot of personal/hobby programming, I'm evaluating and using a ton of tools every year. If I were to ignore the free alternatives, I would be utterly broke now. Sure, if something is a product I'll be using day-in, day-out for the foreseeable future, I'll happily shell out $quite-a-lot. But if I expect to use it for half a day every three months or so, I'll look for something free. Like, e.g. I do some amount of vector drawing for random reasons (designing t-shirts for myself, logos for my projects, user interfaces, whatever) - enough to figure out Inkscape, not enough to justify buying Illustrator.