> it's perhaps all about who one knows and making sure that everyone gets to tell a story of successful exits.

No. It's all about building a great product that people love. Vite is a foundational tool in the JS ecosystem.

Acquihiring the tool/team is entirely downstream from creating a foundational product.

seanclayton 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Vite isn't a product. It's a tool. It will be succeeded if necessary. It happened to Webpack after Microsoft hired the creator, and the JS community pivoted hard. Bundlers and compilers in the JS world happen once a decade it appears.

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sophacles an hour ago | parent [-]

I was at the hardware store this morning. I bought a hammer. It sure seemed like a product... with the whole "being displayed on store shelves" and "available for purchase" thing.

There were several different hammers there, bearing different branding and having different manufacturers.

I don't quite get the distinction...

	▲	senordevnyc 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You paid for the hammer. Did you pay for Vite?

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sofixa 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> No. It's all about building a great product that people love. Vite is a foundational tool in the JS ecosystem.

A foundational tool in an open ecosystem doesn't mean a monetisable product. I struggle to think of even a single example of a foundational tool with a business model.

And of course, not everything needs a business model. But if you're getting VC funding, you kind of need one.

	▲	benoau an hour ago \| parent [-]
		This is the kind of problem I think only UBI solves because there is no apparent business model that can sustain ~20 employees working on software like this, they need to make at least a couple million a year to pay those people!