This was how I got a licence for the Protel (Now Altium) PCB design software when back in university; the cracked version doing the rounds on campus was rather prone to crashing, so eventually I figured I had nothing to lose, called up the distributor and asked them if they did student discounts, as buying a full licence was definitely out of the question, but so was using the, uh, evaluation version with its stability issues.

"Sure thing, how many do you need?"

When I hesitantly reminded him we hadn't discussed prices yet, I was told it was free as they really wanted to snare us in as users before we wound up in paid work where we'd need to be productive employees fast.

I have since had three employers buy full licenses and support deals. Good call by Protel back then.