Hundikoer, please delete the double post.
And, you could have added to the "why pay for programming software thread".
Anyway, I dont think that there are any new arguments in that post.
The licensing and copy protection is a nuisance, yes.
Why dont they just add the price of the software to the hardware then ?
AB/Rockwell could do that, but Siemens cannot. This because there are no compatible PLCs that can be programmed with RSLogix, but there actually are compatible PLCs that can be programmed with STEP7. If STEP7 was free, all the compatible S7 PLCs would get a free ride from Siemens development of STEP7.