They'll have to bite and open source their backend (ala OpenStack) or this is going nowhere beyond toy apps.
Otherwise, if their platform is viable, a third-party OSS clone will pop up and eat their lunch.
My point here is that the only consumers that will pay are ones who have an actual business (model) in place and those people are rarely going to be total code newbs.
I can see this as an interesting playground but it also seems overkill to me for a playground.
I agree that in order for this to take off the data needs to be made portable which means they need to opensource all or part of it and rely on their expertise for the business model. That, I could get behind.