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The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

underjord.io

11–20 of 277 posts

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#12
post #3

Yes and no. The complaint is that some widely used extensions are proprietary. If these extensions require MS servers, then they have every reason to be. Even if they don't, there's nothing wrong with a company holding back some stuff they consider strategic, they're not obligated to release them. If we're debating the OSS credentials of VSCode, it'll need to be based on the code already released (which makes it a pr…

Some additional salt in this particular wound is that the use of the Marketplace of VS Code extensions is also proprietarily licensed. So all these open source developers are shoving their extensions into a competitive advantage for one of the world's largest tech firms.

What does this mean in practice? I guess it protects from the competition. Such as the VS Codium project which provides VS Code binaries without the proprietary parts. But also, as a consequence of this, without the Marketplace of extensions.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#14
post #3

Yes and no. The complaint is that some widely used extensions are proprietary. If these extensions require MS servers, then they have every reason to be. Even if they don't, there's nothing wrong with a company holding back some stuff they consider strategic, they're not obligated to release them. If we're debating the OSS credentials of VSCode, it'll need to be based on the code already released (which makes it a pr…

I don't think it says "Software not open-source is bad". But more something like "It is marketed as open source but it is not".

Developers should be aware that VSCode is not as open source as it claims it is. In my circles, developers could swear VSCode is fully open source without even knowing VSCodium.

If people were more aware about this, they might think twice before using VSCode for everything and getting lock-in (just like the article says)

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#15
post #7

I can be counted as one of the skeptics of MS's open-source efforts. It just seems to me that MS's history and recent investment in open-source puts us in a quantum state between two possibilities: 1. MS has changed their ways, and has become an altruist organization which just wants to give developers things of value for free so they might hopefully choose Azure when they decide what cloud provider to run on. 2. MS…

MS is embedding themselves in the open-source community in such a way that it's almost unavoidable to make use of their proprietary tools

Embrace, extend, and extinguish [1]. It’s practically Microsoft’s motto.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#16
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The developers at microsoft get paid no matter how the company licenses things.

Huh, where is the companies money coming from ?

Selling windows and office, generally. The licensing of these extensions is mostly irrelevant to their plan and the reason they spend money on this development.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#17
post #7

I can be counted as one of the skeptics of MS's open-source efforts. It just seems to me that MS's history and recent investment in open-source puts us in a quantum state between two possibilities: 1. MS has changed their ways, and has become an altruist organization which just wants to give developers things of value for free so they might hopefully choose Azure when they decide what cloud provider to run on. 2. MS…

How is Sublime Text more open? It's closed source.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#18
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The developers at microsoft get paid no matter how the company licenses things.

Microsoft is not a charity, they also need to get money.

And they wouldn't get money if they licensed these extensions differently?

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#19
If, as the author says, live collaboration is important, then its probably much better to rely on GNU screen or similar. It follows therefore that you should then be using an editor that can run inside of a terminal such as Vi or Emacs.

Also, the revelation that Visual Studio Code is not in fact as open source-y as it could be should come as a surprise to nobody

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#20
post #6

I really like VS Code, but am definitely wary of the way that it intermingles open source, proprietary code and remote services. For that reason, I use the VSCodium build most of the time. You definitely need to take responsibility and read the documentation for each extension that you decide to install. You may be surprised. I would also disagree with the article and recommend that you disable telemetry, unless you…

> but I think that turning it on by default is unethical

Not to mention illegal in the EU without explicit informed consent. Accept-by-default etc have been ruled illegal by courts many times.

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