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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

#221

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

venatiodecorus wrote: post #217
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " 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?

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

Can you provide a plausible scenario for abuse is likely to happen with VSCode? Does VSCode even have any kind of market dominance? As others have pointed out, the open parts of VSCode could probably survive on their own as a community supported project, minus the proprietary plug-ins.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#222

Post by jefftk »

pjmlp wrote: post #207
jefftk wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Firefox doesn't use WebKit, and no it is not a separate problem because it shows how being FOSS isn't enough.

Firefox does not use WebKit (and at this point neither does anyone else), but they can look at patches to WebKit to understand how Apple improved Safari's performance. Because Apple produces the hardware, the OS, and the browser, the choices they make in the WebKit implementation are highly informative.

> it shows how being FOSS isn't enough

This is true for every app on iOS: even if you have the source code, you can't necessarily run a modified version, and so you're missing one of the main user freedoms that FOSS should guarantee. I wish Apple would rethink this, but Safari is still usefully open source.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#223

Post by StevePerkins »

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…

> developers are investing in workflows

If this discussion were about anything other than text editors, I would take it much more seriously. But text editor popularity cycles every 5 years or so, and the main reason is simply that we get bored and want to try something new.

When we "invested" in VSCode over the past few years, we discarded all of our previous investments in Sublime workflows.

When we invested in Sublime back in the early-2010's, we discarded our previous investments in TextMate or Notepad++.

When we invested in TextMate or Notepad++ in the mid-2000's, we discarded our previous investments in UltaEdit or God knows what.

When we invested in UltraEdit or God known what back around the turn of the century, we discarded our previous investments in Vi or Emacs or Nano or whatever we were using from the shell in our 1990's computer science classes.

All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again. We'll be bored with VSCode by mid-decade... and when we migrate to the next thing, it will take us a matter of days.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#224

Post by hedora »

ex_amazon_sde wrote: post #198
thisiswater wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the author puts it: "It makes me less certain that this isn't the Extend in Embrace, Extend, Extinguish."

"Extinguish" is often not the case in this decade. It's all about capturing market share aka creating user lock-in.

User lock-in is how Microsoft has traditionally extinguished competition.

Microsoft Office is an early example. I know zero people that switched to it because they liked its functionality or user interface. They switched because nothing else could open Office documents correctly. Eventually, everyone I knew switched to it (and many happily switched away decades later, once “as-a-service” competition cropped up, solving the compatibility problem).

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#225

Post by yencabulator »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #184
johannes1234321 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

> "Viscose" was supposed to be "Viscose".

Uhhh...

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#226

Post by GordonS »

em-bee wrote: post #195
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!).

the compiled version of chrome is not Free Software or Open Source. only a version from sources only is. you can't build chrome from those sources, only chromium. now it is possible that VSCode is different in that regard. but if that were the case then VSCodium would not need to exist. so i guess that it is not possible to build a full version of VSCode from those sources either. i'd love to be wrong on that though

I don't think I mentioned Chrome?

It's perfectly possible to build VSCode from source.

AFAIK, the main reason VSCodium exists is to remove telemetry (since it's opt-in by default in VSCode, something I do disagree with).

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#227

Post by physicles »

Is VS Code lean anymore? I switched to it long ago when Atom got too slow, but I’m using VS under Ubuntu for Go development on a brand new X1 Carbon and it’s laggy as hell — probably 200ms average between keypress and response, and sometimes up to a second between clicking to open a file and getting focus in the window.

I mean I love the extensions and everything but I’m probably gonna use this as motivation to learn vim.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#228

Post by johannes1234321 »

yencabulator wrote: post #225
johannes1234321 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> "Viscose" was supposed to be "Viscose". Uhhh...

I give up. The phone rules over me.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#229

Post by em-bee »

GordonS wrote: post #226
em-bee wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the compiled version of chrome is not Free Software or Open Source. only a version from sources only is. you can't build chrome from those sources, only chromium. now it is possible that VSCode is different in that regard. but if that were the case then VSCodium would not need to exist. so i guess that it is not possible to build a full version of VSCode from those sources either. i'd love to be wrong on that though

I don't think I mentioned Chrome? It's perfectly possible to build VSCode from source. AFAIK, the main reason VSCodium exists is to remove telemetry (since it's opt-in by default in VSCode, something I do disagree with).

is the telemetry in the source?

in that case, very well. i am happy to be wrong, and retract any claim that VSCode itself is not fully open. thank you.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#230

Post by GordonS »

em-bee wrote: post #229
GordonS wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I mentioned Chrome? It's perfectly possible to build VSCode from source. AFAIK, the main reason VSCodium exists is to remove telemetry (since it's opt-in by default in VSCode, something I do disagree with).

is the telemetry in the source? in that case, very well. i am happy to be wrong, and retract any claim that VSCode itself is not fully open. thank you.

Yes, it's in the source code in GitHub.
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