The tools under you keep changing shape

What we're tracking

• •The build-versus-buy question, answered honestly The oldest decision in business software is whether to build a tool yourself or buy one that already exists. It sounds like a technical question. It is really a question about where your time should go. Every hour spent building and maintaining an internal tool is an hour not spent on the thing your customers actually pay you for. That is why, for most businesses, the default answer leans hard toward buying — you buy the thing, you get on with your work, and you let the vendor carry the cost of keeping it current.
• •Slowing down updates on purpose There is a version of "keeps shipping" that looks like the opposite. On Thursday, GitHub described a change to Dependabot, the tool that opens pull requests when a new version of one of your software dependencies is released. Instead of proposing an update the instant a version appears, Dependabot now waits by default.
• •When your vendor gets much bigger Two items on Thursday were about vendors growing, and growth cuts both ways for the businesses that depend on them. A larger, financially healthy vendor is more likely to still be there in five years and more likely to keep investing. A vendor that is busy acquiring and expanding is also a vendor whose attention is divided, and whose priorities may drift away from your particular use case.
• •A small feature about who acts for whom Not every announcement is strategic. Some are small, and the small ones are often the most immediately usable. Google Workspace said that when you view a guest list in Google Calendar on the web, an icon will now appear next to people who have a calendar delegate — someone authorised to manage their scheduling. Google describes it plainly: "When viewing a guest list in Google Calendar on the web, you will now see a new icon next to leaders who have a calendar delegate assisting them with scheduling support." [5]
• •What to take from the day Four of Thursday's items were about the same underlying fact from different angles. Software you depend on is not static. It gets better when the vendor keeps working; it gets safer when updates are treated with a little patience; it changes character when the company behind it grows or buys its way into a new market. The questions worth asking when you choose a tool are therefore less about today's features and more about direction: does this vendor keep improving, does it handle change carefully, and is its growth pulling it toward businesses like mine or away from them.