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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

#51

Post by fsflover »

nudpiedo wrote: post #40

I do not understand people with allergy to non OSS. Compare that to any google service which barely releases the clients as open source, and the clients usually are so complex that may need quite long time to get any professional developer productive in such complex code bases. Also being tied to a controlled protocol, set of libraries, cloud infrastructure which does actually keep your data is in fact the actual evi…

> I am more concerned about law compliance and companies respecting my rights

What about rights to study, modify, share the software? Yes, sometimes they are important: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-impor...

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#52

Post by skohan »

nudpiedo wrote: post #40

I do not understand people with allergy to non OSS. Compare that to any google service which barely releases the clients as open source, and the clients usually are so complex that may need quite long time to get any professional developer productive in such complex code bases. Also being tied to a controlled protocol, set of libraries, cloud infrastructure which does actually keep your data is in fact the actual evi…

I think the point of an article like this is to make developers aware that the "OSS" tool they are using is not as open as they think it is.

As a developer, you might choose to invest in truly OSS workflows which don't involve proprietary MS technologies, and you might not be aware that you're not doing that by choosing VSCode.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#53

Post by x3c »

zxter wrote: post #36

This feels like free to play but pay to win kind of games, or cheap base game to release to poison, countless expensive DLCs. But instead of money, it is freedom. Just because of this I prefer open source projects from smaller developers that are built with labor of love, instead of from big corporate businesses that will eventually try to use you for any kind of profit. Since topic is similar, I would like to recomm…

It's the same strategy that Google follows for Android. The secret juice of the Android app ecosystem is in the Google Play services... And that's entirely proprietary. So even though the OS is open source, it's impossible to truly build an alternative ecosystem. I agree with the author that the marketing rings falsey.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#54

Post by d4rti »

nudpiedo wrote: post #40

I do not understand people with allergy to non OSS. Compare that to any google service which barely releases the clients as open source, and the clients usually are so complex that may need quite long time to get any professional developer productive in such complex code bases. Also being tied to a controlled protocol, set of libraries, cloud infrastructure which does actually keep your data is in fact the actual evi…

Your comment neatly alludes to the difference between the Open Source philosophies and the Free Software philosophy, and the biggest point of difference is "freedom for whom?" wherein OSS is about freedom for developers and FSF is about freedom for users.

Most users don't actually fall in either camp, and largely care about free as in beer (gratis), or possibly free as in doesn't require complex purchasing processes that require signoff or approvals.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#55

Post by shaan7 »

nudpiedo wrote: post #40

I do not understand people with allergy to non OSS. Compare that to any google service which barely releases the clients as open source, and the clients usually are so complex that may need quite long time to get any professional developer productive in such complex code bases. Also being tied to a controlled protocol, set of libraries, cloud infrastructure which does actually keep your data is in fact the actual evi…

> I do not understand people with allergy to non OSS.

Maybe this will help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24047877

`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".'

> just for the sake of keeping OSS folks happy.

Heh. Maybe it is just me but that sounds very condescending.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#57

Post by dependenttypes »

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…

The issue here is that Microsoft pretends to be FOSS-friendly while they are not.

> Even if they don't, there's nothing wrong with a company holding back some stuff they consider strategic

It is when you are going to potentially get into legal trouble for improving said software. Or when your code is leaked due to an extension whose code you can't inspect.

Coldtea: Notepad++ is foss.

> the same thing that happened to all those people using ...

Just because you do not know about it it does not mean that it has not happened. In addition would you be willing to be the first person that this happens to? If they had nothing shady to hide they would release the source of said addons.

(also, IntelliJ and Sublime are paid software, they are not closed source for the fun of it, unlike the subject of this topic)

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#58

Post by shaan7 »

skohan wrote: post #52
nudpiedo wrote: post #40

I do not understand people with allergy to non OSS. Compare that to any google service which barely releases the clients as open source, and the clients usually are so complex that may need quite long time to get any professional developer productive in such complex code bases. Also being tied to a controlled protocol, set of libraries, cloud infrastructure which does actually keep your data is in fact the actual evi…

I think the point of an article like this is to make developers aware that the "OSS" tool they are using is not as open as they think it is. As a developer, you might choose to invest in truly OSS workflows which don't involve proprietary MS technologies, and you might not be aware that you're not doing that by choosing VSCode.

Exactly. I always knew about VSCodium but was lazy. This article (thank you!) made me stop procrastinating. I have replaced VSCode with VSCodium now.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#59

Post by jake_morrison »

The tech giants leverage the profits they get from dominating one area to compete in another. You can't build a hyperscale cloud without being able to spend billions. Amazon subsidizes AWS using their e-commerce business, Google with advertising, Microsoft with Windows/Office/etc.

Microsoft has a long history of giving things away for free in order to hamstring their competitors. Netscape is the prime example. MS is very good at developer tools. How can any commercial editor compete with the amount of resources they are putting into making VS Code and giving it away for free?

MS fundamentally needs their remote editing tools to support developing for Linux-based containers on Windows. Then they leverage it to debug containers running in the cloud from VS Code. But then they keep competitors from using the server side extensions. We need an open source server for this.

Anti-trust needs to look at more than the monetary cost to consumers. It should consider the long term health of the ecosystem.

Re: The best Parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary

#60

Post by nix23 »

benbristow wrote: post #35
nix23 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html

You can look at the source code on GitHub here and compile it yourself if you want... https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/tree/master/src

I dont see what you mean...
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