> Without access to a companies books, you don’t know how they fund things
I’m highly certain about that. Regardless also I don’t think most companies work like that. More or less all revenue at least from the in specific divisions like Windows or Azure is going to the same pot.
> Nobody has enough facts outside the companies
Well.. same argument applies to > 90% of all stuff people say on online forums like HN and makes most online discussions entirely meaningless.
Regardless we can still reason about a lot of things with a fairly high degree of confidence without complete certainty.
> we say that they could make it all free and still afford it, it would still affect priorities of what gets developed.
Yet it’s the direction MS has been taking over the last 10-15+ years. They have invested massive amounts of money into products which are either effectively free for most users or don’t really generate enough direct revenue to fund them like GitHub.
I’m highly certain about that. Regardless also I don’t think most companies work like that. More or less all revenue at least from the in specific divisions like Windows or Azure is going to the same pot.
> Nobody has enough facts outside the companies
Well.. same argument applies to > 90% of all stuff people say on online forums like HN and makes most online discussions entirely meaningless.
Regardless we can still reason about a lot of things with a fairly high degree of confidence without complete certainty.
> we say that they could make it all free and still afford it, it would still affect priorities of what gets developed.
Yet it’s the direction MS has been taking over the last 10-15+ years. They have invested massive amounts of money into products which are either effectively free for most users or don’t really generate enough direct revenue to fund them like GitHub.