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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

#211

Post by esperent »

mschuster91 wrote: post #118
esperent wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think they log IP addresses?

Under GDPR any kind of data processing falls under the protection umbrella. And that includes the data processing that automatically happens during the creation of a TCP/IP connection - where the recipient party automatically gains knowledge of the IP address of the other side. For a web site itself this is generally fine as it is a technical necessity and intended by the user... however stuff that is not necessary t…

> Under GDPR any kind of data processing falls under the protection umbrella.

If processing IPs always required consent, every website, app, and operating system would have to come with a cookie banner. Instead, processing IPs falls under the "required to make things work" banner. I'm sure VSCode processes your IP address for many things such as installing extensions and updates and nobody is arguing they need consent for those.

This particular case is complicated since it's telemetry, however, they are gathering non-identifying data.

I suspect this is currently a grey area of the GDPR which would take a lot of money and lawyer time to work out. In the meantime, MS (and many others) are taking the point of view that this non-identifying data gathering is important for the work of making the software better and therefore doesn't require consent. Personally, that seems reasonable. None of my actual identifying data is being collected, so this matches the spirit of the law at least, if not the letter.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#212

Post by skohan »

kls wrote: post #186
skohan wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Do you think that is the intended user interaction?

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#213

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

skohan wrote: post #37
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…

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…

> "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 chain."

There's plenty of open core software that's the same, like Gitlab. I don't see any big outcry over open core in general so presumably very few people care.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#214

Post by pythonaut_16 »

swsieber wrote: post #169
fadzlan wrote: post #130

The extension by design is made to be optional to use and are not integral (I would argue) to the vanilla experience of VS Code. That also means that if other people wants to create their own proprietary extensions they can do so. The basic experience of the plain VS Code does not change. Now one can say indeed that the Remote and also LiveShare is the best extension there of, and since the extension author decides n…

There is an alternative public directory: https://open-vsx.org/ It's used by vs codium and theia. It's not just those two plugins, it's also the ms-code.cpptools which has proprietary parts. And that's sad because other plugins are built on it like platformio. Which prevents platformio from being added to ovsx because the cpp tools can't be added to ovsx. Which stinks for me because the cpp proprietary parts are wind…

The other side is that keeping some extensions closed-source probably allows the VS Code team to access more of Microsoft's work. I would guess that the proprietary parts of ms-code.cpptools are using code from Visual Studio and other closed-source Microsoft tooling.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#215

Post by nhooyr »

moron4hire wrote: post #177
GordonS wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Despite it being a highly voted feature To be fair, this is a really complex feature to add, so it would be a serious commitment from JetBrains to build it.

It runs in a browser shell. It's got WebRTC ready to go. The hardest part of WebRTC is dealing with whatever bullshit Mozilla and Apple are doing this week, so given that browser shell is Chrome, and you can hardly walk through a computer science journal without tripping over a consensus algorithm paper these days, it's really not that complex.

IntelliJ does not run in a browser shell.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#216

Post by venatiodecorus »

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!).

these extensions are a key part of my workflow so imo vscode in effect is proprietary as i would not find value in it without these. this appears to be an opinion that is shared with other devs here. it seems you simply handwaving that opinion away as immaterial is more divisive than someone asserting that if you appreciate OSS you should use OSS.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#217

Post by venatiodecorus »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #213
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…

> " 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 chain. " There's plenty of open core software that's the same, like Gitlab. I don't see any big outcry over open core in general so presumably very few people care.

it could have something to do with the fact that microsoft has a history of bad behavior and abuse of their market dominance, perhaps?

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#218

Post by moron4hire »

nhooyr wrote: post #215
moron4hire wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It runs in a browser shell. It's got WebRTC ready to go. The hardest part of WebRTC is dealing with whatever bullshit Mozilla and Apple are doing this week, so given that browser shell is Chrome, and you can hardly walk through a computer science journal without tripping over a consensus algorithm paper these days, it's really not that complex.

IntelliJ does not run in a browser shell.

Sorry, I still had VSCode on the brain

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#219

Post by swsieber »

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #214
swsieber wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an alternative public directory: https://open-vsx.org/ It's used by vs codium and theia. It's not just those two plugins, it's also the ms-code.cpptools which has proprietary parts. And that's sad because other plugins are built on it like platformio. Which prevents platformio from being added to ovsx because the cpp tools can't be added to ovsx. Which stinks for me because the cpp proprietary parts are wind…

The other side is that keeping some extensions closed-source probably allows the VS Code team to access more of Microsoft's work. I would guess that the proprietary parts of ms-code.cpptools are using code from Visual Studio and other closed-source Microsoft tooling.

Oh, definitely. I understand it. It's just sad for me, personally, since I don't use those parts but it blocks other things (cpp dependent) plugins.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#220

Post by pythonaut_16 »

codemonkey-zeta wrote: post #203
edoceo wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Nobody I know that uses VSCode uses either Remote or LiveShare. They don't seem critical or core to me.

Not that they are critical or core, but that they are, in the words of the original author, "the best parts of VScode." All the core and critical features of VScode exist in every other editor. LiveShare and Remote are, as far as I and the author can tell, not replicated by any other editor, and are therefore (subjectively) the "best parts". Whether or not you know anyone who uses the features is irrelevant.

I doubt the author would make the same complaint if Microsoft wrote similar proprietary extensions for Emacs or Vim or Atom.

I also doubt they would make the same complaint if JetBrains or someone else wrote the same proprietary extension for VS Code.

Neither the first case nor the second would make any of those editors any less open source.

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