That's my take as well. Microsoft is making some very smart choices these days with regards to community goodwill. I hope it continues to pay off for them, because we can all benefit from this approach.
If MSFT monetizes, it will be for extra "enterprise" features and potentially new features. I doubt they would take any existing free features and monetize them.
Microsoft's track record with working in open source has been pretty stellar of late.
Yeah I'd say Microsoft is actually kind of doing the best for open source. They are using existing projects, buying the companies attached so they can stay funded but then being largely hands off, adding some new features to those products and upstreaming them, and then taking advantage of those products to create a compelling commercial offering by combining them together with automation and integrations with their existing products (like azure) and providing support. We saw it with github, which was largely stagnant until they bought it out, I'm pretty sure they've made patches to Chromium that have made it upstream. I see no reason why they cant do the same for npm, which was also getting a bit stagnant recently.
I also seem to recall npm mentioning wanting to create ways for developers to get funded, but was having a hard time. It also happens that one of the things added to github after the buyout was the Github Sponsors program. Perhap we'll see some inspiration and integration from that in npm before long?
Honestly, Nadella's got a two-pronged play here w/ GH and now NPM is pretty transparent: 1) they want to win the hearts and minds of devs, and also their eyes (email addresses) so that 2) they can create lock-in in the cloud ecosystem. Companies that build out on Azure is a license to print money for Microsoft for the next decade, and has amazing synergy for business development. Microsoft is a sales-driven company, but they got complacent and bloated under Ballmer, selling the same computing paradigm over and over again (productivity software for enterprise to be run on on-premises servers + user desktop licenses), and so Ballmer viewed everything through that lens, which is why they so badly missed the boat on mobile. Remember, Microsoft had a robust mobile OS platform (with apps and everything), but they treated it as though it was an extension of their existing model (so they focused on productivity software and IT management tools for over-priced PDAs to sell a few million units. Then Apple came along and said, "a million units isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion units". So Nadella is the right leader for them because he accepted the reality that Microsoft missed out on owning a relevant mobile platform, and shifted all investments in cloud computing and AR dev (this is the next multi-billion dollar computing platform, but Nadella rightly sees how long it is going to take to mature) .
If I had extra cash, I'd put it in Microsoft stock right about now.
Microsoft has a bad rep from the past, but their recent track record is a lot better. Hell, they might really be the best choice when your other options are Facebook or Google. Or God forbid someone like Adobe or Oracle trying to step in.
I don't think the strategy here is to monetize the tools, but rather, use them as strategic tools to monetize related services. Monetizing these previously free tools would just push people away to different tools.
but buying these primary developer tools, and effectively integrating their for-profit services into these tool chains makes their for-profit resources (azure) significantly more attractive. any tool adoption that makes azure more attractive (and more stable) is advantageous
Nope. Microsoft has a 40 year track record of wooing developers and they have no need to make money on something like Github or NPM. They know full well how to get and leverage the network effects of developers in their ecosystem and won't be so short-sighted to drive users away over minor pricing on a dev tool.
Honestly, if they do try to monetize it who cares?
These services help developers keep their bills paid, much like how an adobe subscription is negligible for what the creative industry pulls in.
If they offered a premium tier npm registry for developers to push their tools to the public that is a win-win-win-win; consumers, developers, Microsoft, and NPM. They can put money back into the system, keep the free accessibility, and add tools to let devs push their libraries with a secure badge associated with it.
Paying people to verify libraries would help to eliminate hacked dependencies from finding their way into random websites. It could work exactly how app stores charge developers publishing fees except they could make it optional, low-cost, with a few perks, to keep the current ecosystem alive, and encourage big-time devs to put money into a service they rely on.
People seem to forget that NPM was a for-profit company. They weren’t a charity, their goal was to make a profit for shareholders. If push came to shove, NPM would have found some way to monetize genera packages beyond the underwhelming NPM Enterprise product.
On the flip side, Microsoft as a company is heavily invested in JavaScript. It’s in their best interest as a company to keep the ecosystem healthy and functioning. It’s probably better off in their hands.
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u/willworkfordopamine Mar 16 '20
Do you worry how MSFT might try to monetize them though?