Corona (LUA based App Building SDK) is now offering a completely free version of their SDK to allow anyone to signup, and start building apps, it's called Corona Starter. In previous years you could sign up and use the SDK but you couldn't actually publish your app. But now they allow the use of the SDK, and publishing into iOS, Android, Kindle, and Nook stores - all for free.
'Yes, it is free as in beer. With Corona SDK Starter, you can sign up, download Corona, build an app/game and publish it (for iOS, Android, Kindle and Nook) without paying us anything. There are some feature restrictions (see chart above), but you can build almost any type of app for free.'
In tangent with this, they have also increased the price of their Pro version, from $349 to $599 for new subscribers only. If you have a current subscription to Corona, your subscription price will stay the same for 2 renewals (2 more years). If you want to get a Corona subscription you better do it now, prices change May 1, 2013.
Another interesting note about their recent announcement of the Starter edition, and the pricing change, is the introduction of 'Revenue Limits' that are now attached to every single version of the SDK except the full Enterprise suite which will set you back $2500 / year. I am not entirely sure how they are going to go about policing the revenue limits but it might be based on a merit system and perhaps some analytics they insert when building your app against their servers. The Starter edition has a revenue limit of $100k, not bad for a free app building suite eh?
Corona starter is a groundbreaking effort to attract more developers to the already popular Corona SDK and it just might work. With the likes of EA using it for app development, they are 'doing it right' in terms of features that are included inside the SDK suite.