121–130 of 149 posts
I remember when the FSF had dire warnings about using the Sun JDK. I ignored it and kept on using Java, and nothing bad happened. The JDK was eventually GPLed, and by then I decided I didn't like Java anymore and moved on to better languages anyway. I feel kind of the same about VS Code. Binary product? Telemetry? Centralized marketplace? Some plugins are closed source? Eh, whatever. That stuff doesn't get in my way…
I was reading [this]( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27687450 ) yesterday, and somebody said something to the effect that we should trust Microsoft, because they've turned around on OpenSource. That we should judge them by their "years now" actions, instead of the past. I tried to formulate a response to this which explained why we couldn't trust them, and it was all a slow-burn ruse, but gave up. This article…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, it sucks what's happening with browser extensions and configurability in general. Opera 3, released in 1997, allows the user to override author styles with their own. Same for IE6, released in 2001. But that's a different aspect of the platform -- the browser itself. At least for the time being, on the Web side, there are so many different other browsers, that Chrome cannot break step with all of them at once.…
> there are so many different other browsers, that Chrome cannot break step with all of them at once. i dont think this is true any more - chrome has such a high market share that they can basically dictate the standards, and force other browser vendors to follow suit.
I personally use test with over 50 different browsers, most of which are quite usable.
The web is now big enough that I can build my own little nooks and use the sites I like while avoiding others.
It's so freeing to realize that anytime a site gives me a newsletter modal, or an ad, or a cookie consent, I can just close it and move on.
This is a good summary of the playing field, but I think they're way overblowing the panic In summary Microsoft has: - Made an incredibly good web-based code editor which is 100% OSS, no strings attached - Made an extensions repository and a bunch of really high quality first-party extensions that have restricted licenses Sure, in a perfect world the whole thing would be fully OSS. But in the worst-case, where people…
You know, except for handling over that juicy telemetry data!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, we now have LSP.
Is it really "on the other hand"? LSP has paved the way for 'hybrid-source' (part closed part open) IDEs. Technically you can close down all the good parts of the IDE and open-source the bare minimum client-side functionality.
"Hybrid-source" has already existed in pretty much every plugin ecosystem for a closed-source product ever (e.g. JetBrains, Sublime Text, Google Chrome, et multa alia) other than the Microsoft Office suite (where people sell proprietary plugins for $50).
> close down all the good parts of the IDE and open-source the bare minimum client-side functionality.
This is still a material improvement over closing down all the good parts of the IDE and not open-sourcing the bare minimum client-side functionality!
The hardest part by far is the "bare minimum", turning the NxM problem into an N+M problem. That was always the original selling point of LSP.
And language servers (even and including the source-available ones developed by Microsoft) tend to be a lot more than "bare minimum" anyway. So Pylance (whatever that actually is) is closed-source, but Pyright and Debugpy are excellent tools and are open-source.
Yes, Microsoft has made a good strategic maneuver here. Their obvious ploy is to garner general goodwill, launder their well-deserved filthy reputation, and establish themselves as the go-to company for software developer tooling, which will hopefully translate into juicy enterprise sales as well as lots of telemetry and platform lock-in for later value extraction, not to mention free bugtesting & developer contributions from the public.
But let's not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Don't forget that they are investing heavily in something that benefits the entire ecosystem. By open-sourcing the most important core elements, they have left the door open for people to fork and redistribute their software if and when they try to go for an EEE maneuver.
The only thing that makes me a little squeamish about LSP is that the protocol itself is controlled by Microsoft and I guess also Sourcegraph. But even then, the community can easily tell Microsoft to go fuck themselves if they try to pull off something like what Google is doing with its Manifest v3.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not saying de-anonymisation is impossible. Obviously it is. I’m asking you to 1. Tell us what VSCode collects that’s so sensitive 2. Show us how you’d de-anonymise a person with that information (but I’m willing to concede that this is possible) 3. Demonstrate harm from knowing that a specific person is tied to a set of VSCode logs. Don’t hand wave #3 away. Don’t assume that it’s self-evident that the harm is hig…
I rewrote this comment a couple times before posting, as getting through to your perspective rules out what I consider logical common sense. You're still asking the wrong questions because you don't get the process. VSCode could collect anything at all, but let's be hypothetical, yet specific so you understand the process. I'm going to use these two pages as reference [0]This RoboLeary blog post describes what VSCode…
I get that this seems common sense and logical to you, but it doesn’t to me. Just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. And arguably, 60%+ of all developers dont seem convinced either.
If you’re concerned about this and want industry level change, you need to work on this pitch. It’s not very convincing.
I had to use VS Code it briefly for a class, and was kind of shocked by the telemetry stuff, and that it's just ignore-accepted by both the students and the instructors. But what turned me off more was this janky feeling around the whole application, something I don't remember experiencing in many other Microsoft tools, such as VB. It feels like it was designed from the code up rather than from the interface down, an…
Could we say that "virality" is reversed with the MIT license compared to the GPL? With the MIT license, additional license agreements can hamper the distribution of the source code or make it useless to the user. Examples: Android AOSP and the Google services, VS code (this article). To the contrary the open-sourced code is still useful to its owner: reputation, occasional free bug-fixes. In the end the MIT license…
> In the end the MIT license is used by corporations to gain market-shares and sell proprietary SW, hence the reversed virality.
Permissively-licensed open source is often used in proprietary products, yes. So what? Often the author(s) of the open source version don't mind and/or want that to be possible -- it's a perfectly legitimate choice for them to make. There seems to be a very judgmental vein in GPL fan thinking that authors who choose permissive licenses are at fault for not all open source being copyleft, and that those authors are "bad". The choice of license is always a "business" decision, even when it's made by an individual acting on their own behalf and not a corporation's!
I remember when the FSF had dire warnings about using the Sun JDK. I ignored it and kept on using Java, and nothing bad happened. The JDK was eventually GPLed, and by then I decided I didn't like Java anymore and moved on to better languages anyway. I feel kind of the same about VS Code. Binary product? Telemetry? Centralized marketplace? Some plugins are closed source? Eh, whatever. That stuff doesn't get in my way…
"They warned me to wear a seatbelt but I didn't and was fine"
This is a good summary of the playing field, but I think they're way overblowing the panic In summary Microsoft has: - Made an incredibly good web-based code editor which is 100% OSS, no strings attached - Made an extensions repository and a bunch of really high quality first-party extensions that have restricted licenses Sure, in a perfect world the whole thing would be fully OSS. But in the worst-case, where people…
> Made an incredibly good web-based code editor which is 100% OSS, no strings attached You know, except for handling over that juicy telemetry data!
This is a good summary of the playing field, but I think they're way overblowing the panic In summary Microsoft has: - Made an incredibly good web-based code editor which is 100% OSS, no strings attached - Made an extensions repository and a bunch of really high quality first-party extensions that have restricted licenses Sure, in a perfect world the whole thing would be fully OSS. But in the worst-case, where people…
> Made an incredibly good web-based code editor which is 100% OSS, no strings attached You know, except for handling over that juicy telemetry data!