Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks

#221

Post by concerndc1tizen » Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 11:43 AM UTC

mosura wrote: post #46

concerndc1tizen wrote: post #23

Do 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…

And when it turns out you were right the whole time they will pretend no one saw it coming and blame you for the problem. You just have to let go of things you have no real influence over.

Indeed! "No one saw it coming" is the most ridiculous thing I've been hearing for the last couple of months regarding global politics. They've literally been predicting and warning against the rise of these (political) issues for 20 years.

And in the same sense regarding VSCode, and the VC fueled takeover of the open source ecosystem; the old guard warned against it, that's why they promoted GPL as critically necessary.

Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks

#222

Post by mrpopo » Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 11:47 AM UTC

kyrra wrote: post #218

grobbyy wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terms of service often contain illegal provisions. I teach kids to flout them too. One of the biggest sins in school is kids learn to follow rules uncritically. There are specific protections allowed when the goal is to maintain / break compatibility. If Microsoft locks competitors out, competitors are quite often permitted to pick the lock. I can't comment on this situation since I don't know the details, but it's v…

I think your analogies are wrong. There is a direct cost to Microsoft that these companies are pushing on them. Specifically around bandwidth. Microsoft does not need to provide access for downloading plugins from their servers to anyone else.

I am quite confident that the bandwidth cost is absolutely not a concern for Microsoft, and that the obvious goal is for them to capture the market.

The "C/C++" extension github repository is 4MB. Probably the download size for the extension itself is a fraction of that, but I won't bother measuring. It was downloaded 400 times over the last minute (there is a live counter on the extension page [0]).

[0] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscod...

That's a 25MB/s or 200Mb/s bandwidth, for one of the most popular extensions. Multiply by the top 10 extensions and you get the bandwidth of an average home optic fiber connection...

Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks

#223

Post by madeofpalk » Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 11:54 AM UTC

benoau wrote: post #118

madeofpalk wrote: post #6

Earlier 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.

I don't care. I was just surprised at them doing that because I thought MS/VSCode did not allow it.

It would impact users if things escalate and gets more hostile between the two and starts impacting features (like regressions in extension availability)

Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks

#224

Post by sgerenser » Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 11:56 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #210

globnomulous wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if I'm being dense, but what is an "audit demand?" (Looked it up and couldn't find anything obviously relevant.)

An Enterprise customer of Microsoft agrees to be audited by MS. In exchange they pay a certain amount for effectively “unlimited use” of the appropriate software. In the past this meant volume license keys that would always activate; wouldn’t count how many devices, etc. And MS audit would check that what you reported was what you had. And could result in big increases in contract pricing. Now that everything is clou…

That was one aspect of the auditing, but they also sent audit notices to random small and medium businesses who were not volume license customers. Basically fishing for license violations, which obviously were very common (and usually unintentional) back in the 90s and early 2000s. Things like installing windows XP or Office on multiple machines without buying extra licenses.

AFAIK it was mainly a scare tactic to pressure companies into compliance and mostly just involved scary looking letters from a Microsoft-hired law firm.

Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks

#225

Post by hnfong » Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 12:04 PM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #204

hnfong wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Generally only applies to trademarks, not copyrights. In most English speaking countries copyright is a proprietary right and you don't lose it if you don't actively enforce it. But there could be time limits to a plaintiff bringing a civil case to court (usually a couple years)…

No copyright alone afaik stops anyone from abusing said rights unless you tell them to stop. Would be happy to have counterexamples.

Of course you can't enforce your rights if you don't enforce them.

That isn't what people mean by "losing" the rights.

For example somewhere on the planet somebody is running a pirated copy of Windows 10. But it would be misleading to post a headline saying "Microsoft LOSES copyright over Windows 10!!!".

Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks

#226

Post by hnfong » Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 12:11 PM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #213

hnfong wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Generally only applies to trademarks, not copyrights. In most English speaking countries copyright is a proprietary right and you don't lose it if you don't actively enforce it. But there could be time limits to a plaintiff bringing a civil case to court (usually a couple years)…

It doesn't apply to trademarks either but it's convenient to insist that trademark "enforcement" is required if you're either a trademark lawyer looking for more clients or you're an aggressive litigant and you want an excuse so people will forget you're a monster. Oh the Disney corporation had to sue the village primary school because their play used a trademarked name for a folk tale everybody knows about... it's n…

There is a huge spectrum between suing village kids for trademark infringement, and allowing everyone to misuse and abuse the trademark to the point it becomes a generic term.

I don't think I disagree with you generally, but it must be recognized that trademarks are different from copyrights in that there is a mechanism where if you don't assert your rights in the trademarks you could lose them.

And, like what the sibling comment said, I'm not going to engage with you on unnamed posts where unnamed people cited some LLM to argue against you...

Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks

#227

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 12:14 PM UTC

exceptione wrote: post #195

kstrauser wrote: post #3

And this is why I'm using Zed today. I'm deadly serious. I was a huge proponent of VSCode at first but I've soured on it, and now I don't want my workflow to depend on it in any way. Awesome software, but I don't trust the upstream org further than I must.

Even better: Theia. It supports most vscode extensions right out of the box. https://theia-ide.org/

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks

#228

Post by jollyllama » Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 12:15 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #74

znpy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, yes? Half of the initial mac os x kernel was ripped off freebsd, giving pretty much nothing back. Afaik netapp is also basing their system on bsd. Sony uses freebsd as the OS for their playstation. And many more, giving essentially nothing back.

Regarding apple: They support cups and clang, and stuff like swift and webkit. Also, the darwin kernel is open source. I’d be shocked if netapp hard forked bsd and doesn’t upstream fixes.

ONTAP is a fork of BSD (dunno if they upstream or not) and NetApp are far from the only ones in the storage sector who have done this.

Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks

#229

Post by tialaramex » Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 12:15 PM UTC

brookst wrote: post #219

tialaramex wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't apply to trademarks either but it's convenient to insist that trademark "enforcement" is required if you're either a trademark lawyer looking for more clients or you're an aggressive litigant and you want an excuse so people will forget you're a monster. Oh the Disney corporation had to sue the village primary school because their play used a trademarked name for a folk tale everybody knows about... it's n…

Well if you’re going to cite unnamed posts where unnamed people cited some LLM to argue against you, obviously you are 100% correct.

Fair, I actually misremembered and it wasn't my post they responded to with LLM slop but here is a HN user named "ranger_danger" in a thread with me in it, doing exactly what I described, LLM generated "citations" of US court cases that never really happened.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43509544

It's hard to know whether it's worse if "ranger_danger" did this on purpose and thought it's OK, or whether they didn't realise how the LLM works and thought this list was real.

Re: Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks

#230

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 12:15 PM UTC

croes wrote: post #214

pjmlp wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it be easy to start with? Hardly anything is given for free in this life, it has to be earned.

Let me clarify. You need an OS, you need compiler, you need some libraries. Unless you write all that by yourself you always build in somebodies kingdom.

Indeed, however all of those have a license that most certainly was abied for, at least if we are speaking about doing the right thing.

Many of these "building castles in other people kingdoms" projects, tend to use free tier WebAPIs, forked projects, reversed engineered protocols, and then folks get entitled when the owners pull the carpet.