This counter-argument is flawed. Why limit oneself to one's own household? (Garage? Basement?) Get out more! Visit a friend. Talk to an internet cafe owner for a special deal to run one's own programs. Rent virtual machine time in the cloud. There are many creative, flexible, low-cost possibilities.

If one wants to.

Clearly this different approaches have different costs. Fixing a bug from my couch or asking some stranger at a cafe if I can install msys is quite different things.