I haven't used piper, so I can't comment on that. But people seem to have focused on git. Remind me not to actually use product names as examples; it inevitably triggers people into holy wars and prevents them from actually seeing the point.

I don't care if the competing solution would have been git, Perforce, hg, or whatever. The point was not "git". The point was "off the shelf". I also do not dispute that Piper may well be a great system; I've never even seen it, so I wouldn't know.

The issue is not about "outsourcing" (which is a rather loaded term that should not be substituted for "using off the shelf products"). It's not about "engineer productivity", per se. The question is about overall business efficiency.

I'm sure it could make engineers that much more productive to have the latest and greatest laptop every year. That doesn't mean we replace all our hardware every year. We also don't give every developer a terabyte of RAM. It's the same basic issue.

It's always a trade; those dollars can potentially do more good somewhere else.

You'll note that I have at no point stated outright that I thought they made the wrong decision; only that I'm skeptical. I asked the question about the ROI, and people decided to get all heated about it. The only arguably inflammatory point in my comment was about Google's case of NIH.

It's really hard to deny that Google has acute NIH.

Sometimes that's a good thing; they've done some amazing things and given us some amazing technologies. Other times, I question their decisions.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that.