What we're seeing here, I think, is very analogous to the Office Suite Wars.
Back in the day, there were many desktop software makers who were viable businesses. Multiple spreadsheet companies (like Lotus, for instance), multiple Word processors and the like. Over time, Microsoft Acquired or drove out of business much of the competition by aggregating all of these functions into a coherent office suite.
This time around, companies like Github are "liberating" key functionality via acquisition. I think some of these things will end up like atom -- open source projects that play a key role in githubs core business (yes, I expect atom to replace the in-browser editor on github, so that's the assumption I'm working on here)... while others will be like the extra businesses that Github runs on the side.
I don't think this is bad, since Easel was acquired by github... I think it will live on.
But others, like the many small vibrant independent desktop software makers will die. And that's not great.
The difference is that you can still use that old version of Professional Write (.pw files ) under DosBox. However, if you invested a lot of your time/resources in a service like Multiply.com (or this one) you are screwed.
What we're seeing here, I think, is very analogous to the Office Suite Wars.
Back in the day, there were many desktop software makers who were viable businesses. Multiple spreadsheet companies (like Lotus, for instance), multiple Word processors and the like. Over time, Microsoft Acquired or drove out of business much of the competition by aggregating all of these functions into a coherent office suite.
This time around, companies like Github are "liberating" key functionality via acquisition. I think some of these things will end up like atom -- open source projects that play a key role in githubs core business (yes, I expect atom to replace the in-browser editor on github, so that's the assumption I'm working on here)... while others will be like the extra businesses that Github runs on the side.
I don't think this is bad, since Easel was acquired by github... I think it will live on.
But others, like the many small vibrant independent desktop software makers will die. And that's not great.