Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

underjord.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 277 posts

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#131

Post by electronstudio »

dmortin wrote: post #75
CiTyBear wrote: post #14

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.

They don’t brag about it as much as Microsoft do but IntelliJ Community Edition is free software.

https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/blob/master/...

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#132

Post by harrygeez »

easton wrote: post #123
pjmlp wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has largely outpaced Microsoft on what concerns Extinguish.

Can you give some examples? I haven’t seen Google close source something lately, except for Go’s package hosting server (which makes me inclined to believe you, I just haven’t heard of other instances).

Google Play Services pops to mind

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#133

Post by hvis »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #115
hvis wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how does it make them money?

By integrating well with Azure and by making their brand attractive to developers.

You don't need proprietary plugins for that, though.

To make the brand attractive, free/open source is best.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#134

Post by hvis »

Jnr wrote: post #127
hvis wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how does it make them money?

I saw somewhere that they will offer the remote development in the browser as a paid cloud feature. They can also at any time make those proprietary features non-free. Perhaps when they get a large enough user base or new CEO or something like that.

You know... even for a feature like that, the plugin itself can be open source.

After all, if the remote development feature is based on a centralized server (owned by MS), the license check will be performed on that server. And if no centralized server is in play, suffice it to say, anybody sufficiently motivated could reverse-engineer the plugin, remove the license check, and go on using the feature for free.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#135

Post by john_miller »

skohan wrote: post #66
jmeister wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimally help their stock price*, which is supposed to factor in longer term effects including developer community goodwill etc.

If you have compelling evidence of corporations choosing long-term "good will" over short term profits I would be very interested to see it

every generous return policy by a shop

every PR action

free(as in beer) software (e.g. visual studio)

charitable donations (e.g. google to wikipedia)

not pressing charges for rampant cracking (photoshop used by students/children)

diversity photo ops/hiring practices

non-firing of incompetent employees

free workshops or tours for the public/children

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#136

Post by johannes1234321 »

hvis wrote: post #133
johannes1234321 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By integrating well with Azure and by making their brand attractive to developers.

You don't need proprietary plugins for that, though. To make the brand attractive, free/open source is best.

The "bad" reason why they are closed: They have the open core, but with key parts closed it's boarder for others to build a solution on top of it, thus they can shovel more integrations with their services in.

The "good" reason: Because relicensing of old software is hard and while they want to make it available (to strengthen their position in the developer community) See also my comment in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24048633

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#137

Post by luma »

This is quite a reach. VSCode is open source. Some popular extensions are not. Neither extension used as examples here are ones that I use, so they certainly aren’t critical to the product functionality.

The argument here feels akin to saying Linux is open source, but some applications available for Linux aren’t, so Linux is thus somehow not actually open source.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#138

Post by tremon »

neutronicus wrote: post #93
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…

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

And for users with access to technical expertise to do the same. IOW, free software decouples the maintenance and adaptation of software from the original vendor, much like personal vehicles, household appliances and general home improvements rely on a support infrastructure that has only very minimal ties with the original manufacturer.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#139

Post by HelloNurse »

Being used to the real Visual Studio, I've always regarded VS Code as a disposable, low-investment casual tool: it cannot make use of the project and solution files of its big brother, it lacks major features (e.g. the remote debugger), it is also casually engineered (e.g. no proper extension configuration GUI and very loose file caching).

It's just an advanced text editor to edit files (of all types in principle, mostly Python, JavaScript and JSON in practice) and to make Git commits, not an IDE to base important work on; I've never tried to set up any sort of "project" or complex configuration.

As an end user (as opposed to an extension author or "open source" contributor) I'm not particularly worried about lock-in and proprietary features because the cost of not using VS Code any more is limited to switching to a worse editor.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#140

Post by tremon »

neutronicus wrote: post #94
nudpiedo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, expressly not, except maybe to the (strictly American) capitalist conception that monopolies are a good thing. When you take the original capitalist idea that says monopolies should be avoided because they distort the free market, Free Software is actually very capitalist: it removes the stranglehold that the original manufacturer has on the software after initial sale, thereby ensuring that market power doesn't concentrate in one entity.
Post reply on HN