I guess that when users make the habit of using the free tool, then the company that provides it can easily embed other convenience habits that could potentially lead to a future sale.

Both Microsoft and Github have commercial products to sell at a later stage, VSCode has now integrations with Azure, I don't know about Github integrations on Atom but the potential is there.

When the user is using your free tool you are one step closer to provide something additional that is so convenient that is hard to say no, even if is paid.

They're working on making Atom + Github to be a 1-1 association in your Git workflow. See https://github.atom.io/

Ballmer's Law: "Developers, developers, developers." If you want to be a platform vendor, you need to have developers. Lose the developers and you lose the business.

Microsoft has been a platform vendor for a long time. VSCode is part of their argument for why they should continue to be one.

I know, right? Vim and emacs should ease off a little :)

What I'm interested in is whether Live Code Share is a free service.... feels like it might be a paid service. Or limited free then pay? Not sure. It's also for visual studio.

Also be interesting if someone makes a teletype plugin for VSCode :)