I don't get why something like that needs to be an online service. I don't want to pay forever and be dependent on something that could disappear tomorrow. I don't think I'd get $100 of value vs searching online, especially since I attribute some negative value to tools that can be taken away from me. $9 per month also makes it costly enough that I wouldn't buy it as a 'just to have' kind of tool. 100 queries wouldn't be enough in those months, so I'd have some months where I'm paying for nothing and the odd month where I don't get enough usage. I typically know everything I need to for day-to-day usage of the shell and only do things that require discovery every few months. It gets recommended by the r/homelab folks who haven't adopted Proxmox. VMware still have a program like this going for their admin user base. License auditing was real and gave visibility into this usage. Later, these may stop being eligible for MSDN use and generate more revenue.

For companies, it could mitigate some of the costs associated with the proliferation of environments that needed to be licensed from top-to-bottom. individual devs would frequently use some of the loopholes through licensing partners to commit to what was basically a three year subscription that spread the cost. It was priced and designed for companies to be buying as a bundle with other licensing.

People give SP a hard time quite rightly, but as a revenue generator for devs in many markets with limited options, it was a very good choice. NET devs who jumped to SharePoint in the 2000s to keep their top rates. As an example, the cost was fairly insignificant to the many.

It was still within reach so devs could get it and be productive. Individual developers paying was always an insignificant volume.

Download copilot webstorm