as I was pretty young and wouldn’t even have had the means to
That's why I paid for the license in 2008, I was earning pretty good money by then, even though. I also paid for some other software like Fraps ($37) and Winrar ($52) around that time hehe. It's not like it's that expensive either when you consider they're lifetime licenses.
Which reminds me, I should start donating more to open source projects I use now that I've switched to linux.
You're probably right. In sense I relate to that xkcd comic, but in reverse because of my poor memory, that's really why I linked the XZ-utils backdoor case, as I had almost forgotten all the surrounding details.