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Microsoft is introducing hidden APIs to VS Code only enabled for Copilot?

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Re: Microsoft is introducing hidden APIs to VS Code only enabled for Copilot?

#71

Post by tristan957 »

pzmarzly wrote: post #62
tristan957 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has Microsoft allowed Cursor to access the VSCode Marketplace? As far as I know, it is against the ToS for any editor other than VSCode to access it.

Probably not. Please suggest to extension authors to dual-publish their extensions to OpenVSX and VSMarketplace. So far all authors I engaged with were happy do to so (except for Microsoft of course, who are the only benefactor of this wallet garden situation).

I find that many of the extensions I use do dual publish. I also dual publish my own extension for people because walled gardens are not cool.

Re: Microsoft is introducing hidden APIs to VS Code only enabled for Copilot?

#72

Post by tristan957 »

com2kid wrote: post #61
tristan957 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has Microsoft allowed Cursor to access the VSCode Marketplace? As far as I know, it is against the ToS for any editor other than VSCode to access it.

I think Cursor just mirrors the VSCode marketplace on their own servers. They used to have an ugly work around for installing extensions, but now it just works and I see links to https://marketplace.cursorapi.com/ inside of Cursor's extension browser.

Any idea how they got the data? I would imagine that just downloading all the data is also against the ToS.

Re: Microsoft is introducing hidden APIs to VS Code only enabled for Copilot?

#73

Post by Forgeties79 »

frenchie4111 wrote: post #13

Everyone is reading this as intentional anti-competitive practices. While that may be true, isn't another reasonable explanation that the Copilot development team is moving as fast as they can and these sorts of workarounds are being forced through in the name of team velocity? It takes a lot more time/energy to push public APIs and it's probably a very different team than the team developing the copilot extension. S…

>Seems a bit like a "don't attribute to malice..."

I'm not saying you are wrong or that the rest of your comment isn't pretty valid, but a lot of people attribute malice to microsoft out the gate because they have history of operating out of malice.

Re: Microsoft is introducing hidden APIs to VS Code only enabled for Copilot?

#74

Post by timcobb »

kburman wrote: post #52
ghuntley wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't really help ya. As outlined at https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ as soon as you compile "VSCode" (MIT) the ecosystem fractures in a bad way (tm) including no-license to run majority of MSFT extensions (Language LSPs, Copilot, Remote Development). If you are a vendor producing a MIT fork then one needs to iterate the graph and convince 3rd party extension authors to _not use the MSFT extensions_ as dependencies _an…

If MS didn't owned VS code. What would they be doing?

Building VS Code :)

Re: Microsoft is introducing hidden APIs to VS Code only enabled for Copilot?

#75

Post by ctoth »

frenchie4111 wrote: post #13

Everyone is reading this as intentional anti-competitive practices. While that may be true, isn't another reasonable explanation that the Copilot development team is moving as fast as they can and these sorts of workarounds are being forced through in the name of team velocity? It takes a lot more time/energy to push public APIs and it's probably a very different team than the team developing the copilot extension. S…

So basically the same way XMLHttpRequest was born[0]?

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060617163047/http://www.alexho...

Re: Microsoft is introducing hidden APIs to VS Code only enabled for Copilot?

#77

Post by tristan957 »

throw4950sh06 wrote: post #66
fortenforge wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh not quite. Famously, you can fork VSCode, but you can't use the VSCode Extension Marketplace if you do, which loses a lot of the network effect benefits of the VSCode ecosystem. (As far as I know Cursor is flat out violating Microsoft's terms of service with respect to the extension marketplace).

OpenVSX. Again this is just the same as RHEL repos behind license login.

Red Hat provides support for their packages. If you're not paying for support, you don't get access to the repos. That makes sense to me. What does Microsoft gain by creating a walled garden? They don't provide support. All that they provide is hosting. The Eclipse Foundation provides hosting for free for OpenVSX, which is an amazing service to the community of people using VSCode forks that aren't allowed to access the VSCode Marketplace. Microsoft should either relax the ToS on the Marketplace or acknowledge OpenVSX as the one and only marketplace for extensions.

Re: Microsoft is introducing hidden APIs to VS Code only enabled for Copilot?

#78

Post by nikeee »

frenchie4111 wrote: post #13

Everyone is reading this as intentional anti-competitive practices. While that may be true, isn't another reasonable explanation that the Copilot development team is moving as fast as they can and these sorts of workarounds are being forced through in the name of team velocity? It takes a lot more time/energy to push public APIs and it's probably a very different team than the team developing the copilot extension. S…

Also regarding the wording "Proposed API": This seems like it's just some kind of incubator for APIs before marking them as stable. So that copilot thing may just be their incubator project. It may be not though.

Re: Microsoft is introducing hidden APIs to VS Code only enabled for Copilot?

#79

Post by immibis »

gavinray wrote: post #17
frenchie4111 wrote: post #13

Everyone is reading this as intentional anti-competitive practices. While that may be true, isn't another reasonable explanation that the Copilot development team is moving as fast as they can and these sorts of workarounds are being forced through in the name of team velocity? It takes a lot more time/energy to push public APIs and it's probably a very different team than the team developing the copilot extension. S…

Seems like the only sensible comment in this thread so far. Here's what I imagine it's like working on the Copilot team: > Mgmt: "We need this feature, and we need in 2 weeks." > Devs: "That feature is not technically possible." > Mgmt: "Well, figure out a way to make it possible. That's _your_ problem."

Government: "We fine you two zillion dollars. You should have listened to the dev."

Re: Microsoft is introducing hidden APIs to VS Code only enabled for Copilot?

#80

Post by peeters »

frenchie4111 wrote: post #13

Everyone is reading this as intentional anti-competitive practices. While that may be true, isn't another reasonable explanation that the Copilot development team is moving as fast as they can and these sorts of workarounds are being forced through in the name of team velocity? It takes a lot more time/energy to push public APIs and it's probably a very different team than the team developing the copilot extension. S…

> Everyone is reading this as intentional anti-competitive practices. While that may be true, isn't another reasonable explanation that the Copilot development team is moving as fast as they can and these sorts of workarounds are being forced through in the name of team velocity?

Wouldn't another way of saying that be "the Copilot development team is leveraging their Microsoft ownership to create products in a way not available to the general marketplace?"

The goal might not be to squash competition, but blessing one client with special treatment not available to others can still be anti-competitive.

Whether that would fall afoul of any regulation is beyond my expertise. Naively, most companies have internal APIs that are not generally available. But then most companies don't have paid public marketplaces on their platform.

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