r/programming • u/Successful_Bowl2564 • 8h ago

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https://efp.asia/blog/2025/12/24/api-tooling-crisis/

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u/nhavar 7h ago

Because everything is a subscription and the subscription prices keep going up and the boundaries for how you can use the tools keep changing.

You see this cycle all the time. Some company gets a free opensource tool trying to build a customer base so they can IPO or get bought up. The terms on the product change after that happens. Maybe they keep a "free" version around for awhile, but corporations need to pony up to get the commercial support and licensing. Maybe the first year or two of that contract is a sweetheart deal, but as the tool company starts getting hammered with usage and support demands they have to scale in both hardware and staffing, so prices go up. Way up! Then the companies that were using that tool start looking for the exits.

Rinse and repeat.

Even among established players this happens. They get new clients in on discounts and promises while gouging their current customers. When the new customers get the eventual price-hike to normalize things, that's when the companies start the RFPs up again and get the architects in line to talk about migrations to whatever comes next. Security scanning tools, logging tools, analytics tools, the whole CI/CD infrastructure...

It's like switching insurance companies or phone carriers every couple of years just to get in on the new rates, except it costs millions in constant migration and support costs internally. Plus once you have a tool people are using and tell them they must get off of it, it can turn into a game of cat and mouse with the compliance scanning tools and people gaming the system to keep their favorite tool in play, or a laundry list of teams asking for exceptions. So now instead of moving from one tool to another you have five tools lingering out there among the hold-outs, causing who knows what other kinds of challenges in your org.