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The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

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Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#91

Post by jcelerier »

sudhirj wrote: 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…

> 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.

that is kinda debatable, considering that those are extensions to an LGPL-licensed core (Blink, the rendering engine used in electron) - see e.g. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/directory-discuss/2017-12...

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#92

Post by pjmlp »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #50
pjmlp wrote: post #2

Just like many other products, developers have bills to pay.

Freedom != free beer

Many here seem to share other opinion.

Every time there is a product being post, rains posts of free beer alternatives with half of the features.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#93

Post by neutronicus »

d4rti wrote: post #54
nudpiedo wrote: post #40

I do not understand people with allergy to non OSS. Compare that to any google service which barely releases the clients as open source, and the clients usually are so complex that may need quite long time to get any professional developer productive in such complex code bases. Also being tied to a controlled protocol, set of libraries, cloud infrastructure which does actually keep your data is in fact the actual evi…

Your comment neatly alludes to the difference between the Open Source philosophies and the Free Software philosophy, and the biggest point of difference is "freedom for whom?" wherein OSS is about freedom for developers and FSF is about freedom for users. Most users don't actually fall in either camp, and largely care about free as in beer (gratis), or possibly free as in doesn't require complex purchasing processes…

Well, FSF is about freedom for users with the technical expertise to modify the software and understand its source code.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#94

Post by neutronicus »

nudpiedo wrote: post #76
d4rti wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment neatly alludes to the difference between the Open Source philosophies and the Free Software philosophy, and the biggest point of difference is "freedom for whom?" wherein OSS is about freedom for developers and FSF is about freedom for users. Most users don't actually fall in either camp, and largely care about free as in beer (gratis), or possibly free as in doesn't require complex purchasing processes…

Having worked in large corporations and now wishing to bootstrap my own projects here my two cents on how I see things currently in the OSS/FS: I see the current state of FS as a way to cooperate between organizations in an almost transparent way and at the same time protect themselves from competitors by making the entry barrier to the market higher to little players as they would need to be remarkably stronger than…

Oh, I think there might have been some expectation on Stallman's part of doing injury to capitalism.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#95

Post by worble »

>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.

It's worth noting you can easily switch vscodium back to using the official extension marketplace by changing the product.json file as noted here: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#ext...

They note the legality of this is dubious. I'm no lawyer so I can't say I understand the intricacies of this, but as far as I can tell, it's merely against the TOS of the marketplace. At worst, I imagine Microsoft would just lock the marketplace down and prevent vscodium accessing it in the future, if they see it as a big enough problem.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#96

Post by coldtea »

>It makes me uneasy to accept VS Code as an "open" project in any wider meaning of the word when compelling features are legally locked to only work inside the family of Visual Studio products.

Yeah, so? I'll still use it. And those "compelling features" were only added in the last year or so. VSCode became immensily popular sereval years before they landed.

Plus, if somebody likes, they can create the same functionality as open source extensions upon the open source VSC core.

Microsoft also has to create something to differentiate themselves, right? Or should it all be just free foss stuff?

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#97

Post by pydry »

thisiswater wrote: post #78
skohan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is exactly the risk: developers become dependent on the VSCode extension ecosystem, while thinking they are safely using only FOSS tools. This is the kind of double-speak which lets MS have the best of both worlds. From a marketing/developer relations perspective, developers think they are using open-source tools. But in actuality, developers are investing in workflows where MS is a critical link in the chai…

As the author puts it: "It makes me less certain that this isn't the Extend in Embrace, Extend, Extinguish."

Other Microsoft OSS ventures makes me wonder if they haven't resurrected that policy too (e.g. the crippling slowness of azure mysql and azure postgres as compared to SQL server).

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#98

Post by pjmlp »

thisiswater wrote: post #78
skohan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is exactly the risk: developers become dependent on the VSCode extension ecosystem, while thinking they are safely using only FOSS tools. This is the kind of double-speak which lets MS have the best of both worlds. From a marketing/developer relations perspective, developers think they are using open-source tools. But in actuality, developers are investing in workflows where MS is a critical link in the chai…

As the author puts it: "It makes me less certain that this isn't the Extend in Embrace, Extend, Extinguish."

Google has largely outpaced Microsoft on what concerns Extinguish.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#99

Post by coldtea »

jcelerier wrote: post #91
sudhirj wrote: 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…

> 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. that is kinda debatable, considering that those are extensions to an LGPL-licensed core (Blink, the rendering engine us…

Blink appears to has this license:

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/blink/+/109acd80b...

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#100

Post by coldtea »

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #31
sudhirj wrote: 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…

Remote doesn't use Microsoft servers, it uses your servers. C# debugging doesn't use Microsoft servers. C++ debugging doesn't use Microsoft servers. Microsoft only broke these extensions on VSCodium to cripple open-source builds.

Or, you know, to actually make money from an editor they created, offer the core and tons of functionality for free and as FOSS, and spend millions employing people to work on, but adding some non-free value-added extensions...

(Which even them, they offer free as in beer).

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