I know, this is the standard VC playbook: First growth at all costs to get everyone into the ecosystem, then pull up the net and monetize. The latter phase is usually when all the subscriptions, value-add nag screens, data sharing agreements and other enshittification goodies pop up.
And how would it work otherwise? You can't perpetually offer a product for free (in all senses of the word) AND satisfy exponential ROI expectations at the same time.
If this is what's going on here, I'm worried what the "monetization" phase will entail.
The other option I see is being owned by a behemoth like Microsoft, in VSCode case, who can pay millions per month in engineering salaries and PaaS, while keeping it free.
They are so big they can monetize it using Copilot or not even monetize it properly, just to get good faith from Developers, Developers, Developers.
No, the other option is something like Sublime Text that has a small team working on it and is paid for by a very fair one-off payment by the customer.
And how would it work otherwise? You can't perpetually offer a product for free (in all senses of the word) AND satisfy exponential ROI expectations at the same time.
If this is what's going on here, I'm worried what the "monetization" phase will entail.