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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

#181

Post by jefftk »

pjmlp wrote: post #168
jefftk wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The same WebKit that now breaks the mobile Web and it being open source is completely irrelevant.

That Apple locks down iOS very tightly is a separate problem.

WebKit on Mac continues to be usefully open source, and I believe performance improvements that Apple has made for Mac Safari have been incorporated into Firefox, Chrome, etc.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#182

Post by skohan »

kls wrote: post #165
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…

I really don't understand this, when I use a library in my codebase I make sure I understand the licencing implications of using said library. When I add an extension to my IDE, I make sure I understand the licencing implications. If I add and extension to my IDE, I have modified my IDE beyond the base IDE, I should very well know the implications of doing so. It is no big secret that these two extensions are not FOS…

> When I add an extension to my IDE, I make sure I understand the licencing implications.

The UX decisions of VSCode go against this kind of careful consideration of licencing implications. If I open a code file and VSCode has a suggested extension for the file type, I will see an animated popup in the bottom of the screen, with a button to install. The simplest way to get rid of this popup is to simply install the extension. There's also no link on the popup to read up on the licensing terms. Everything about this interaction design wants you to just mindlessly install the extensions VSCode suggests to you, and I would wager this is what a lot of users end up doing.

Also if you look at the VSCode homepage[0], very close to the top of the page you get these marketing claims:

> Free. Built on open source. Runs everywhere.

You might be very capable of understanding the details here, but I think a new CS student who's maybe just heard of open source and knows a little bit about it could be forgiven for conflating these claims with the idea that VSCode is FOSS.

[0]: https://code.visualstudio.com/

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#183

Post by GordonS »

lozenge wrote: post #148
easton wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link for the key logger?

The full list is here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/privacy/required-wi...

It's a big page, so I might be missing something - could you point me towards the part where is says it logs keystrokes?

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#184

Post by johannes1234321 »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #112
dmortin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a difference: intellij/Jetbrains don't claim to do OpenSource. Microsoft markets them as OpenSource player and Viscose as OpenSource IDE and if you don't look at the license terms you miss the part.

Seems I can't edit the comment anymore. "Viscose" was supposed to be "Viscose". Thanks autocorrect :)

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#185

Post by GordonS »

blackoil wrote: post #48
mschuster91 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I think that turning it on by default is unethical Not to mention illegal in the EU without explicit informed consent. Accept-by-default etc have been ruled illegal by courts many times.

Does telemetry include any GDPR data?

AFAIK, no. But there is also the EU ePrivacy Regulation, which is some ways is stricter - I'm not actually sure it if applies to software, or just websites though?

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#186

Post by kls »

skohan wrote: post #182
kls wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand this, when I use a library in my codebase I make sure I understand the licencing implications of using said library. When I add an extension to my IDE, I make sure I understand the licencing implications. If I add and extension to my IDE, I have modified my IDE beyond the base IDE, I should very well know the implications of doing so. It is no big secret that these two extensions are not FOS…

> When I add an extension to my IDE, I make sure I understand the licencing implications. The UX decisions of VSCode go against this kind of careful consideration of licencing implications. If I open a code file and VSCode has a suggested extension for the file type, I will see an animated popup in the bottom of the screen, with a button to install. The simplest way to get rid of this popup is to simply install the e…

I guess it is just me, but I have never clicked on that pop-up. I always go to the extension tab and add extensions there, where the second link at the top, has a direct link to the licence of said extension. I always go to the extensions tab because it provides documentation about the extension, which I want to read before I add it to my IDE.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#187

Post by aspenmayer »

GordonS wrote: post #77
em-bee wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This divisive "us and them" stance is unnecessary, and doesn't help anyone. OSS and free software matters to me - so I use VSCode, which is OSS. Whether extensions are OSS or not is immaterial (the same extensions you can use with VSCodium!).

All FOSS is OSS, but not all OSS is FOSS.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#188

Post by AshamedCaptain »

acqq wrote: post #154
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #34

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 ou…

No, not at all . Platform specific does not mean proprietary. In fact, the same vsix also contains a lldb and a mono binary ( which are platform dependent) but these are opensource and in fact build scripts are provided.

It is the hidden cpptools binary which has no source that is the problem. And that one is not that well announced. So lot of people think the extension is opensource when the important bits are not.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#189

Post by Jasper_ »

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…

The LGPL parts here are dynamically linked, which is exactly what the LGPL was supposed to let you do.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#190

Post by GordonS »

aspenmayer wrote: post #187
GordonS wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This divisive "us and them" stance is unnecessary, and doesn't help anyone. OSS and free software matters to me - so I use VSCode, which is OSS. Whether extensions are OSS or not is immaterial (the same extensions you can use with VSCodium!).

All FOSS is OSS, but not all OSS is FOSS.

Right, but VSCode is MIT licensed.

The gripe in the article is about extensions not also being MIT licensed - an argument precisely nobody would be making if it wasn't Microsoft; as someone else here pointed out, you could make the same argument about SQLite, but nobody would.

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