I use cursor primarily because of the great tab autocomplete model, but I've always thought it was a bit scummy they blatantly violate the VS Code licensing. Windsurf ships a special version of the pyright extension for this reason. Why doesn't cursor have to play by the rules too?
Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks
131–140 of 354 posts
Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is worth the long term risk. Either you don't get caught and can move faster, or you get caught and the penalty is usually small and a long way down the line, by which time your company will have either folded or grown enough to pay without difficulty.
That's the play when your adversary is regulation--the government moves slowly, court cases move even slower, and you can grease the wheels politically. That is not the scenario here. Cursor is being hunted by an extremely motivated corporate competitor. Cursor has been leeching the gorilla's blood and the gorilla finally noticed. Microsoft doesn't (necessarily) need the law here. They have it if they need it, but th…
It's possible but I think this is a bit of a non-issue for cursor. Microsoft extensions are pretty good but are not irreplacable, and in the meantime cursor has grown astronomically fast and has grabbed a ton of "AI Coding" mindshare. I think the gamble has already paid off for them: if they have to play nice with licensing and develop their own solutions to replace MS proprietary extensions, they now have the scale to do that. GH Copilot was first in the game but now has the reputation of the poor man's cursor.
Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the play when your adversary is regulation--the government moves slowly, court cases move even slower, and you can grease the wheels politically. That is not the scenario here. Cursor is being hunted by an extremely motivated corporate competitor. Cursor has been leeching the gorilla's blood and the gorilla finally noticed. Microsoft doesn't (necessarily) need the law here. They have it if they need it, but th…
It's possible but I think this is a bit of a non-issue for cursor. Microsoft extensions are pretty good but are not irreplacable, and in the meantime cursor has grown astronomically fast and has grabbed a ton of "AI Coding" mindshare. I think the gamble has already paid off for them: if they have to play nice with licensing and develop their own solutions to replace MS proprietary extensions, they now have the scale…
I don't know anyone that even knows Cursor exists, outside HN readership bubble.
Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks
#134To be clear, I'm don't like the Microsoft has a proprietary Marketplace, but a company openly violating the terms of use for their own profit is a bit much in my opinion. > Cursor allegedly has been flouting Microsoft terms-of-service rules for some time now by setting up a reverse proxy to mask its network requests to the endpoints used by the Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace. This allows Cursor users to install…
The Cursor founders (technically the company is called Anysphere, Inc) are all young MIT grads. What they needed is a 40-year-old with a degree from Fitchburg State who could say "Woah, don't do that! It's not worth the long-term risk!"
Grow fast, raise a few billions, deal with the lawsuit in a few years.
Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Emacs user here, have used vscode in the past. Yep, vscode is more intuitive. However emacs is mostly the kind of thing you dedicate a couple of months of discomfort and enjoy for the rest of your life. Quite literally. Spending some money on the “mastering emacs” book ( https://www.masteringemacs.org/ ) is worth imho. Bonus point: little by little you start enjoying doing more stuff in emacs. It’s a meme, but it’s t…
I dedicated my time between 1995 and 2005 as my main UNIX editor, and don't miss installing Emacs.
It’s gotten way more ergonomic, BTW. Even if you treat it as a toolkit to build your own editor, the building blocks are much nicer than they were back then.
Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks
#136Shitty move (as expected from Microsoft) but I don't see the bigger issue. The beauty of open source is that you can always roll back to a version that did work. Of course continued developement and support from there on is your problem, but Microsoft never owed that to you anyways. Cursor, Codium and all the other VS Code forks have unlimited VC funding and are worth tens of billions of dollars combined. They can af…
The C/C++ extension isn't open source though, and that's where the "doesn't work on forks" DRM is implemented. At least the clangd extension is open source and is a viable alternative.
But what happens when you anger the wizards? Some guy gets 4 two liter bottles of Mt Dew, and in a weekend comes up with a better plugin, and open sources it. Look it up on Monday. I just went from VSCode 1.52 to 1.99, and it's not pretty, but... Can someone convince copilot to rat out it's owners and write out a extension that runs cLisp? And all the emacs code runs in VSCode? ( I am saying this so facietously... ).
Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Zed have a comparable C++ extension?
Zed uses tree-sitter and LSP; most popular languages do not require extensions, and extensions for niche languages are shockingly easy to write. Literally 100-300 lines of Rust boilerplate and around 300 lines of config boilerplate, with minimal maintenance/upkeep. https://zed.dev/docs/languages/cpp
Many words to state that it doesn't.
Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I've noticed this using cursor. I was surprised that the extension marketplace seemed... identical to VS Code.
But why should we care? It's obvious Cursor's IDE is VSCode, I cannot think of a single reason why I should be against executing whatever the hell I want on my computer. It's not Cursor doing this, it's me doing this using Cursor.
That’s not how companies see it.
From MS point of view it’s Cursor doing it to them.
The way copyright and other rights to your IP you claim to have work in practice, is you need to enforce those claims or loose the rights.
Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks
#139Do you guys ever feel tired of 'sounding the alarm'? I feel like I've been doing that for years on a wide range of topics, but every time it's like you're talking to cult members. How do you break through to people? People say things like "you're overthinking it", "that's never going to happen", "I don't care because I like using VSCode and not alternatives". Is it individualism? That they only consider their own nar…
Man, it is just a code editor.
Tech bubble remains tech bubble, when common, non-tech people are much more screwed, yet nothing is being done except saying "lol, just install Linux".
Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks
#140This is one of the reasons why I switched to CLion for C++ work, and the fact that VS Code and its derivatives was a pain to configure for C++.
I also use PHPStorm for web dev work and we use MS DevOps at work and that extension is unstable, causes IDE errors for me and I will not use MS products just for this one irksome bug. I prefer PHPStorm for my work, because working with PHP in VS Code has never been a great experience for me. I just want my tools to work, I fight with code, I don't want to fight with my tools as well.