Live data from Hacker News

The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

underjord.io

151–160 of 277 posts

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#151
post #74
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know full well about VSCodium, but choose not to use it. For all intents and purposes, VSCode is open source - the source code it freely avaibale on github under an MIT license. AFAIK only the installer and some extensions are not open source - that plainly doesn't mean VSCode itself isn't open source. VSCode is a fantastic tool, and I'd prefer to use it directly from Microsoft. I am aware that there is telemetry,…

isn't that the same thing with chrome vs chromium? chrome as a whole is not Open Source or Free Software while chromium is. whether that matters to you is up to you. those who want to use Free Software or Open Source should use Chromium and VSCodium

Google doesn't run a user-agent check in, say, YouTube that makes it refuse to run under Chromium.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#152
I don't think it is a problem (which I understood that for author is). It seems that VS Code is a platform to provide content. Plugins are this content and some are open source and others are closed source. Another thing is that I prefer Jetbrains IDEs. They have real power of refaktoring and sincerely who writes imports nowadays (talking about Typescript)?

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#153
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-i…

Most developers don't care they just want to get to job done. Many of them use IntelliJ, etc. which is not free software either. Those who care about using fee software already know about these things, because they check before starting to use a new software.

While IntelliJ is not completely open source, the community edition definitely is(not free in the gpl sense but OSS). But they are careful in marketing it that way.

https://www.jetbrains.com/opensource/idea/

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#154

And even the C++ intellicode/parser extension is proprietary. But no, last time this was mentioned, it was downvoted to oblivion. "But, you see, they put the intellicode C++ extension in Github, so it must be opensource!" Wrong. They are just using Github to distribute binaries. If you download the vsix file from either github or the vscode extension repos, you will find a 10MB binary called cpptools that was not the…

Your claim is supported by the "Offline installation" section of:

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools

"The extension has platform-specific binary dependencies, therefore installation via the Marketplace requires an Internet connection in order to download additional dependencies. If you are working on a computer that does not have access to the Internet or is behind a strict firewall, you may need to use our platform-specific packages and install them by running VS Code's "Install from VSIX..." command. These "offline' packages are available at: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-cpptools/releases."

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#155
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-i…

> Developers should be aware that VSCode is not as open source as it claims it is. VS Code is as open source as it claims to be. > If people were more aware about this, they might think twice before using VSCode for everything and getting lock-in Are there many software developers who are not aware that most open-source software can run proprietary extensions ? I personally don't use any of Microsoft's services. Ther…

If you don't use Microsoft products the claim can't be taken as false. What in your own words do you know? Nothing.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#156
post #155
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Developers should be aware that VSCode is not as open source as it claims it is. VS Code is as open source as it claims to be. > If people were more aware about this, they might think twice before using VSCode for everything and getting lock-in Are there many software developers who are not aware that most open-source software can run proprietary extensions ? I personally don't use any of Microsoft's services. Ther…

If you don't use Microsoft products the claim can't be taken as false. What in your own words do you know? Nothing.

One can use plenty of Microsoft products while using none of their services.

Which is an important distinction in this context.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#157
I think its great that Microsoft has made a great open source code editor/ide! If one wants a full open source eco system there is always Eclipse/Atom/Emacs/Vim. The paid Vscode alternative is IntelliJ but that is crippled with extensions in the community edition so you have to buy the commercial IntelliJ edition to get language extension.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#158
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 without even realizing it Try removing the word "proprietary" from that strategy, and see if it still fits the evidence you see. Or replace it with "paid". Look at their earnings reports ( https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor/earnings/FY-2020-Q4... ). Licensing proprietary so…

Let's imagine that a few years from now, MS starts advertising Azure right inside VSCode, and they start releasing features which favor Azure integration, and actually cause problems when working with GCP. Now imagine I as a developer want to pick up shop and move to another editor, but it turns out my workflow depends on proprietary extensions which are only available on VSCode, and my velocity will be cut by 70% if…

In this scenario would you be relying on a proprietary extension to interact with GCP developed by Microsoft? Surely you would want to use a Google or Third-party developed extension to do that right? And in that case the developer of that extension would have a vested interest in making it available to you again, potentially in a forked version of VS Code. As long as the editor is open source extension developers can just fork it and create a new public directory of extensions. The only thing you potentially lose is Microsoft's proprietary extensions which are likely to always work well with Microsoft products and you really shouldn't use them to interact with Microsoft's competitors.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#159
post #142
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And users can help by actually using VSCodium, LineageOS, Linux distro Chromium builds, non-Xcode clang, etc. instead of the proprietary variants.

Which the large majority chooses not to, so there you have it, the open source dream.

On the other hand, Safari's WebKit being open source allowed Google to build Chrome on the same engine. Years later, Chrome's Blink engine being open source meant the same for Opera, Brave, and Edge.

It is hard for individuals to run and maintain custom forks, but the benefits of open source in terms of preventing lock-in are substantial.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#160
https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/best-way-to-get-rid-of-a... 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.
Post reply on HN