You can get OpenModelica, an open-source implementation of the same underlying modeling language (Modelica). http://www.openmodelica.org/

The language is quite complicated, though, and not all programs can run all well-formed simulation problems.

You could always register for a class at your local community college to get the necessary student ID. But I agree, a 'home user/general nerd' version would be great, possibly with limitations on export or suchlike.

I'm interested in playing with it too, although strangely there doesn't seem to be any way to get audio or MIDI into or out of it, which is a pity. I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to add on, since Mathematica has that sort of thing built in.

In WSM it's possible to create models that call external function in DLLs. I've been using a modelica wrapper to the oscpack library (http://www.rossbencina.com/code/oscpack) that allows sending and receiving simple OSC messages. This makes it possible to communicate with music applications that implement OSC. I've been using it to send input signals from an iPhone using TouchOsc.

Most interesting - thanks for the tip.

Hm, it's not a new problem to them... Mathematica has a hobbyist license called "Home Edition" at u$d 295. Maybe if many people show interest in the same kind of licensing for this new product they'll think about it.

"Seems insane they don't offer pricing that covers my use case..... I'm not a student so I couldn't buy the $75 student version."

They do offer pricing for your use case. You simply locate a student and have them buy it for you.

They understand people are going to do this. They just don't want Boeing to get that pricing they really don't care if you do. But they aren't going to say that.

At that point is there any difference from just pirating it? You're going to be in violation of the license anyway - I'm just they have a no-transfer clause.

I think what people fail to realize (when they downvoted my comment) is that it is common for companies (based on my 30 years in business) to offer special pricing to groups but not enforce that in any way. This is much different from pirating. This is "look the other way". An example of this is Apple's educational pricing. You can get this by presenting a student id of anyone in the Apple store and you get the ed discount. You can also buy from the Apple website and simply choose a school and get the education discount on applicable products. So ask yourself why they don't police this better? Because they don't have a problem with anyone doing it otherwise they would. But they aren't going to advertise it and I'm sure an Apple salesman won't tell you about buying this way.

Why? Well another reason is it's lets them get more money out of companies. So in other words they are allowed by law to charge different prices to different groups of users (by the way why is this fair?) So they set it up as a discount to some users rather than saying "we are going to get Boeing for more because we know they can pay more".