Isn’t that an interesting title – I wonder if you can guess how I plan on tying the two together! Can we all say Click Bait! Stay tuned, and we will show you how I combine both of these into one blog post...
Now many of you know that NativeScript is 100% open source. I can take NativeScript and build the entire stack locally on my computer and never deal with Progress again, if I were to so choose. This is awesome from the standpoint that I am not technically stuck (*1) if I need to fix some issue. Many of the technology stacks in the past you could get to a point, and then if the issue was lower in the stack you were totally stuck. In my career I’ve run into this several times; and it really sucks when you can’t fix the issue because it is a issue in a lower part of the framework where you can’t get any access to it. In this case; we have full control over everything if and when we need it, so we are is a great position moving forward if using this stack.
So, the question I have seen around; and even had myself in the past was: Since NativeScript doesn’t make any money, how can Progress possibly continue to pay to keep it going? What is their business plan to turn a profit, and when will it be cut off?
Seriously; common sense says; if a product doesn’t make money after a couple years; a company will discontinue it. How many projects has Google canned that is making money; but not making as much money as they wanted to continue it? So, if the product has no real way to make money long term; then why would they keep it?
Yes, it does have a couple minor revenue streams, like paid support; but even the paid support probably doesn’t actually fully even pay for just the support techs that do all the awesome support for NativeScript. So basically NativeScript does not make any money directly. On paper; it looks like it is probably just burning money...
So why would Progress spend so much money to continue enhancing, and maintaining it, for a product that will never actually turn a profit??? Then what are our risks as the community that they will pull the plug tomorrow when they finally figure this out???
Well rest assured; I don’t believe it will discontinued any time soon. First; I would be totally shocked if most of NativeScript development costs are not written off as a very nice tax liability (*2). Smart companies have money pits in certain area for key reasons, one of the biggest is taxes. The other interesting thing is it is not really just a normal money pit used just for tax liability reasons.
NativeScript is the Advertisement. NativeScript is not a product, in that sense to Progress – it is a significant way to get you (the developer) to use Progress services. So just like some large company might pay millions of dollars in advertising; per year to try and reach you. Progress is doing the same thing – but instead they are actually targeting it specifically at developers. Virtually every dollar of advertising is being spent on developers. Who is a large part of their market target; well us developers! So it is an extremely well targeted advertisement, much better than you can do with any adwords scheme you can find!
Changing this point of view, completely changes the entire narrative of why NativeScript exists and its continued long term viability. It is no longer just a money losing venture of Progress. It is an significant advertisement to get you to use all the other Progress services. This is a critical point to understand; as this underpins the whole reason why NativeScript should continue to exist for the foreseeable future.
Since NativeScript is very much like Fortnite (see told you I would work it in!). They hand out the awesome 100% free game. And which game company has been just raking in the money (like 2.4 BILLION in 2018 alone) from a single free game? And if anyone follows Fortnite; you will know they are constantly improving it. However, they get you on all the “extra” attached revenue streams. Yes, you can play Fortnite 100% free and never spend a dime and even continue playing all the cool game modes that keep getting released.
You can also use NativeScript, create awesome apps and never actually spend a dime with Progress. Which is actually what the majority of the community does; but all Progress needs is a very small percentage of the NativeScript users to use its payed services and NativeScript ends up causing a major profit for them.
As some examples; to show how this works… Progress owns NativeScript, and say you want someone to build you an app, who is your first stop? (Especially if you are a large company!) You might see a nifty services page on Progress’s site – you contact Progress. But they do not actually do the contract work. They actually sub-contract it out to others; and take a hefty cut for that privilege. This works well for everyone involved. Or perhaps you are a independent developer; Sidekick, cloud builds, attend the conferences? All revenue streams. Larger companies; secure data storage, chatbot, ai, etc. Progress offers many of these “addon” services; and all of them have fully working integration's with NativeScript. So any development by a enterprise class company has a large chance of starting and choosing to stay with the owners of the NativeScript stack and paying for that privilege.
In other words; Progress is brilliant – they have managed to figure out how to take the same model used for Fortnite and use it on developers. So hopefully this reassures everyone that NativeScript should have a long life ahead of it. (*3)
Well played, Progress!
Notes:
*1 – I am not stuck; in that I can fix my own copy of the code and deploy the app. This does NOT mean that Progress will take your patches and fix the master so that it is fixed in the next version(s). It just means you can fix it in your copy…
*2 - Progress is a multi-national company; so they have taxes in multiple countries – different countries have different laws; but typically losses in one business unit can be used to write off tax gains in other units. So the “paper” loss of NativeScript offsets revenues from the other parts of the company, and so it then lowers some of their tax burden in probably several countries.
*3 - I am not a employee of Progress or Telerik; nor have I ever been, so this is all based on the know facts. However, this matches all the facts to a T. So, it is my strongest belief based on all public data available; that this is why NativeScript exists and will continue to exist. It also explains why Progress was willing to continue to sink million of dollars into NativeScript; and also purchased things like Kinvey for 49 million dollars.
Please note all companies names, Logos and products are owned by their respective owners and convey no endorsement of any content or other products in this post.