TeamPlain Acquired by Microsoft

Brian Harry announced that Microsoft has just acquired TeamPlain and will begin the process of rolling the product into the Team Foundation Server (TFS) suite.  Bravo!  The absence of web-based access to TFS was a glaring oversight in the original release of TFS and this product grew up almost overnight to fill that gap.  We have it installed on our TFS system and it is a great way to allow non-developer types to get at the work items and non-code data that they want to see. 

I remember having a conversation with Martin Danner about this product when he installed Team Plain on our TFS installation.  It went something like this.

“Hey, Martin.  This is cool.  I wonder why this wasn’t baked in the base product.”

“They probably just didn’t have time to get it into version 1.0.  I’m sure they’ll have it in the next version.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty obvious that TFS needs this to be for real.  Why in the world would a company make something like this when Microsoft will obviously kill their product in the next release?”

“Maybe they just want to be acquired.”

“Nah. Really? People do that? C’mon.”

I am really that ignorant, folks.  It actually doesn’t cross my mind to start a company without a sustainable business model and a long term strategy that doesn’t include selling myself.  I guess I have a lot to learn.