The whole business model is around “Optimization through custom tools”.
We can go with your idea, sure: a few months in, an Account Manager from the cloud provider shows up and says your bill could be reduced by 50% if you just adopt some changes, using their custom, super optimized tools (“minor changes” will be the mantra).
And now you have your own company looking back to you on how can they get those savings, people who don’t understand what a VM is and cannot differentiate salesforce from an elastic container, as everything is “cloud”, but heard “50% off”.
Having faith on a for-profit organization about doing the right thing, with access to your computer and the things you do on it, may be a bit too much.
It was always quite a simple thing to do: “disclosure”. Explain me, in plain English, the things you are going to do when I install your software: do not bury it on a 40-page EULA with multiple amendments referring to different aspects that affect me and for which I would probably need a lawyer, or their very service to understand it, and that is of course subject to be changed at any time they feel.
It’s 2026 and they keep on nagging it: even Apple stopped doing the little summary at the beginning of the “Accept the New Terms” where they explained, in plain English, what those changes were.
And every time they do that, it is always on their favor: you code and eat pizza, they have a 1000 dollar an hour group of lawyers, ironing the hell out of their legal terms to must accept to use their services.
I some countries, however, this may penalize you, credit score wise or whatever.
This option, in my opinion, should truly be the last resource, after exhausting (and documenting) every other route.
Very important: public routes, like Twitter Support, even better (make sure every step is traceable if the only option left is, indeed, blocking debts on your credit card).
Kid: you are playing with forces of nature you cannot comprehend :-)
That being said: I would love someone from Marketing and Branding to explain me this “Copilot everywhere” because it is unintelligible (unless they want to dilute it through over exposure).
I understand "free services" eventually come to the conclusion of either charging or using ads to finance and even make money out of them.
I believe there are two caveats on it:
1. Approach: to make the experience worth it, so that ads are not very intrusive , done correctly, which, over and over and over, it is proven contrarious to the interest of the user.
2. Relevance: if you are going to put ads onto your product, make sure things are done correctly, curate if possible what will be shown (I believe Microsoft's worse fear would be to see online casinos ads onto something like GitHub, as an example).
It depends: having it notarized is a way to show someone with a certain reputation of "Hey! This is my code, this is me, if something happens, you can kill the switch".
If notarisation requires you some kind of payment, I would be okay with you charging me some money, if I obviously find your code has a good value for me.
I read comments around here about "Well: you can compile it yourself" or "it's open source! You can check the code by yourself".
And, while all of those arguments are accurate and valid, the point is "I do not feel like it" or, a little reminder, "The Great Suspender" was an example of a beautiful open source little app to suspend tabs on Google Chrome that, one glorious day, switched hands and, suddenly, after some time, someone noticed the repository and the code from the add-in were different, and those changes were made with nefarious intent.
Luckily, somehow found out, but some people do not have the time or the will to be playing that game.
A piece of code that requires access to my camera, regardless of size (<1000 lines of code) or build, it's something I just don't put on my computer without thinking it twice.
Thank you for the tone: I hope I responded to your question :)
You may be severely wrong: I like to pay and contribute to things I use, believe it or not.
I love to buy small apps from indie developers or donate some money to things I use and I love: when I was a student, of course, things were different.
Nowadays, luckily, I can contribute and I do it gladly.
That is literally what i am observing lately with my provider: i have 2 bars and yet i do not have internet, where as my gf, using the same iPhone model, with a different provider, having 2 bars, has perfect data connectivity.
We can go with your idea, sure: a few months in, an Account Manager from the cloud provider shows up and says your bill could be reduced by 50% if you just adopt some changes, using their custom, super optimized tools (“minor changes” will be the mantra).
And now you have your own company looking back to you on how can they get those savings, people who don’t understand what a VM is and cannot differentiate salesforce from an elastic container, as everything is “cloud”, but heard “50% off”.