Hello,

I don't seem to see any special licensing provision for developers in what I have read online. I'm curious as to why SideFX does not cater to this need.

Most productions are supported by numerous developers who don't need to generate production quality output (watermarks, resolution limits and the like are fine), but who need to develop tools for production pipelines, and must therefore be able to understand and provide solutions for all kinds of issues faced by artists. This would necessitate use of third party renderers and the ability to open and work with files that are used in production pipelines that demonstrate an issue being faced by the artist. I don't see a low cost dev license provision to allow for this. Other DCC's provide a number of dev licenses for free along with full licenses.

Why no love for developers? Or am I missing something?

It's probably best to send SideFX a mail with this question. No guarantee you will get a answer on the forum.

I agree, there should be a sort of developer license that is targeted development of tools and HDAs.

Being limited to a indie license is a strong disincentive for developing and maintaining any open third-party tools or HDA, and the full license is not viable unless you’re in a studio context.