Ok I did some calling around and other tuners in the area were less rude about it and gave me some better explanations. Essentially they didn't wanna deal with compatibility mode.

Appointment set at English Racing in Portland at the end of March

I'm a complete noob myself but I've been lucky enough to get some cars running and driving better on a couple different tuning softwares and the big hurdle is learning a new interface. The fundamentals are exactly the same but my first time going from ECMLink to TunerStudio was a lot. Then adding HPtuners on top of that. There seems so be a lot of tuners that know 1,2,3, etc softwares and that's all they want to deal with.

The amount of people who uses ECMlink has decreased so much in the last 10 years, it just isnt lucrative enough to learn as a tuner when you might not have any customers who need it. And it is limited compared to modern standalones. I learned to use ECMlink a long time ago. And I've recently learned other software and I'd honestly would prefer MS or something instead. I am by no means a tuner at all. I just like to DIY and like techy things, I do robotic process automation and machine learning for a living.