In 2000, around the time I got my first computer, I didn't know software had a price. We would walk in to computer stores and pick any software, movie or music album (CD) for LKR 100.00. Thats about US $1.00. I even wondered how software companies could do so well, selling software so cheap.

My first genuine software purchase was in 2004. It was a AL Chemistry related CD. It had some experiments and some theory. Trust me, it didn't help, it was boring with poorly done videos, and the LKR 1,500.00 I spend on it was a huge disappointment.

As I joined University of Peradeniya as an engineering student in 2007 and Linux/Ubuntu became my primary platform life was free with FOSS. My friends started calling me, Mr. Genuine. I even did my Digital Arts related flash assignment on a trial version of Flash.

Things took a turn when I purchased my first Mac - the iMac 2019. I beefed it up to be able to handle some significant payload. It houses a Core i9 - 9900KF processor, RX580 graphics and 64GB of RAM. I bought my first software license - A Skylum Luminar 4 before my iMac CTO was delivered to me. Then came the Affinity collection of software. The main reason was the free software I was using in Linux / Ubuntu like Inkscape were not as smooth in Mac OS Catalina at least.

I loved the Olive Editor which is a great free video editor. I love it, not because its free, but because it is faster than the free-ware competition as it uses hardware acceleration. How ever it wasn't running smooth on Catalina either.

With some videos (tutorials) coming up soon, I thought of going for a more professional video editor. I thought about using DaVinci Resolve which as a great free tier. But it lacked plugins. So I decided to settle down with Final Cut Pro. While USD 299.99 isn't that much, to date, it is the most significant software licence fee I have paid.

With it I hope I can make some decent video tutorials and Sri Lanka AL syllabus targeted educational material.