Historically software companies were smart enough to overlook piracy outside of their key markets. Plenty of poor American kids learned to program on pirated copies of visual studio.
Some point the company's got greedy and decided they want to crack down in all piracy. This shortsightedness first hit Adobe. I'd estimate that half the people who know photoshop learned it on a pirated copy. The harder Adobe makes piracy, the fewer kids teach themselves photoshop.
Microsoft, to their credit, made Visual Studio Community Edition, although IMHO they nerfed the first few releases too much.
You can view commercial software with overlooked piracy as a form of the rich subsidizing everyone else.
Again it is unfortunate that companies got greedy and tore the system down for a one time boost in revenue.
