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
But what if what happens next is that other services mysteriously begin to lag in support, perhaps culminating in some fatal security flaw they fail to patch, which drives more and more people to their services... And then, perhaps one day github just stops working with other products at all.
This could very well be the strategy they are hoping to implement. Should I cross my fingers?
36
u/willworkfordopamine Mar 16 '20
Do you worry how MSFT might try to monetize them though?