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> The thinking is if they can get a critical mass of folks onto the option that is non-free, they will extinguish the free option by no longer supporting it.
by shkkmo 4y ago
> The thinking is if they can get a critical mass of folks onto the option that is non-free, they will extinguish the free option by no longer supporting it.
I assume you mean "non-free" as in speech, not beer, since VSCode is free. Hasn't that "critical mass" been the case since day one? I can't imagine that VSCodium built binaries have ever had more than a tiny fraction of the user-base of VSCode? Thus I don't see how "Extinquish" plays a role here.
I still think it makes more sense to think of the strategy as more akin to the FOSS-washing / freemium models used by many companies.
- taeric 4y agoYes, non-free as in speech. Though, if they were to flip it from the "beer" sense of the term, I'm not entirely clear that would make much difference. As long as they have tripped the critical mass of the userbase. And it is very similar to the freemium models used by many companies. Apologies if I made that sound like a disagreement. I think the point was more that Microsoft doing it is part of their old game plan. Random companies acting in other means is a bit of a non-sequitur. That said, I think it is common idea that many other companies have tried to extinguish competition in their "free" market? That is, many companies do what they can to make it easy for hobbyists and such to use things for free, but as soon as you are in a company, they try to milk the company for fees.